


Bliss In Emptiness

by monicawoe, quickreaver



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Blood Drinking, Blood Kink, Blood Magic, Bloodplay, Dark Sam Winchester, Demon Blood Addiction, F/M, Purgatory, Sam Winchester's Demonic Powers, Soulless Sam Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-11
Updated: 2013-07-11
Packaged: 2017-12-19 05:06:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 41,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/879794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monicawoe/pseuds/monicawoe, https://archiveofourown.org/users/quickreaver/pseuds/quickreaver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As a reward for her loyal service, Lucifer brings Ruby back from death. When Sam throws himself into the Cage, Ruby slows his fall — just enough to grab a hold of his body, but not his soul. Together, they hunt the ever-increasing monster population and uncover evidence that Crowley and Castiel might not be as antagonistic as they seem. As the situation unfolds, Eve's interest in Sam piques and she gives him a gift that changes the very essence of what he is.</p><p>words by monicawoe<br/>art by quickreaver</p><p>written for the 2013 spn_j2_bigbang</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

 

Ruby died by her own blade, by the magic of the dagger she'd had in her care since she'd first been sent topside after Azazel's death. The enchanted metal was instant death to all but five beings. She wasn't one of them. So when Dean ran her through while Sam held her, she knew it was the end.

Except that it wasn't. Her consciousness began to drift apart until only the key moments of her life remained, unspooling frame by frame. Her first kiss, her first spell, her first death, the first time she met Sam, the first time they fucked, the first time he drank her blood, and finally the last thing she ever saw: her God's power piercing into the world. It was the purest light she'd ever seen.

Lucifer's grace erupted from the chapel floor, so powerful that it tore apart nearly everything in its path. Ruby could see it pouring forth as the last flickers of her blackened soul watched from behind her vessel's dead eyes. Sam and Dean tried desperately to get away, but they were trapped. And then they vanished. Something had saved them.

The chapel shook as Lucifer roared in fury at his vessel's disappearance. In that moment Ruby felt his will close around her, forcing her back together, making her whole. **You swore to serve me for all time.**

_I did._

**Then, serve.**

She felt herself, borrowed body and soul, dragged across the cold stone floor by a giant hand, closer and closer to Lucifer's terrible light. Just as the last of Him poured forth, she was pulled down, the gateway closed above her and everything was black.

She was there a long time; below the Earth and above Hell, her borrowed body frozen in time and darkness as her soul stayed cruelly, painfully aware. She couldn't see, and the only sound she heard was the deafening whisper of Lucifer when He chose to talk to her. He spoke to her three more times after pulling her back from the brink of death.

The first was when He visited Sam in his dreams. **He is perfect.**

The second wasn't even directed at her, it was a broadcast—all channels, all frequencies—from the deepest part of Hell, to the highest cloud in Heaven. A shout of triumph, an exultation. **Yes.**

She waited then for Lucifer's word, eager to be freed, eager to walk by His side as He set the world aflame. But she stayed where she was, trapped like an insect in amber. All she could do was imagine what it was like—Lucifer in Sam, crushing the world to ashes beneath His feet.

 _Why? Why won't you let me fight with you?_ she asked Him then, a desperate prayer to her God. _Why am I still here?_

**You're the contingency plan.**

Ruby was left alone, with nothing but the after-echo of His voice. Time passed, but she had no way to measure it, no sun from up above, and no screams from the souls of Hell below ticking off one agonizing second at a time. Her mind played back her memories, trying to fill the void with something, anything to remind her she was still there, that she still existed.

_Her feet hurt as she ran through the forest, the normally soft needles of the pine trees like thorns underneath her soles. It was dawn, and the trickle of light coming through the trees wasn't enough to see very far._

_Blinking through tears that wouldn't stop, she ran until her left foot caught on a root and sent her falling to the ground. Her head slammed into the cold earth and for a moment everything stopped._

_When she looked up again, the wan light of the morning had gained strength. Enough that she could make out more of the trees around her. She pushed herself up to standing, looking down at her dirt-stained dress and her skinned knees. Father had said: go north to find the doctor. She clutched her hand around the small bag of coins hanging from her waist and walked towards the nearest tree, looking for moss._

_She crouched down low to the ground and reached her hand out towards the trunk, not sure if the oddly colored patch she saw was moss or just a trick of the light. It was soft to the touch and she felt a slight flicker of hope. When she pulled her hand back, she saw one of her fingers was dripping red. It was bleeding, sliced open by a sharp rock. Trying to numb the pain, she brought the wound to her mouth and sucked on the cut. It stung, but the pain subsided quickly. She'd look for a few other trees and then head the way they pointed her. She could be at the doctor's within the hour if she hurried, then she could tell him what happened, give him the coins and he'd come back with her, and heal her father._

_She put her hand against the trunk of the tree, wincing as she felt the cut in her palm open wider. There was a growl, something low but close. An animal. She whipped around, fearing a wolf had found her, or a bear, but saw nothing. Just the trees, and the slivers of sunlight between them._

_To her left, there was a sound of pine-needles being crushed. Her heart hammered in her chest as she saw a large, grey leg reach out between two of the trees. A wolf then, she thought, though the paw itself was far too large for a wolf, but when the other leg came through and then the head, she knew she was wrong. She would have preferred a wolf. This thing—this beast, whatever it was—wasn't anything she'd seen before. It was as large as a bear and as broad, but its legs were long and lean. Its head looked like that of a great cat with amber eyes to match and above its ears were two large curling rams' horns. It growled again, and its breath left a white trail of smoke hanging in the air._

_She gasped and stepped backwards, instinctively, trying to think. Wolves would chase you if you ran from them, she knew that much, but didn't know if it was true for bears, or whatever this was. She held up her hands and opened her mouth to speak, though she had no idea what to say._

_The monster stepped forward crushing the soft forest-bed one slow step at a time beneath its large clawed feet._

_Her eyes closed and she tried to remember the prayer her father had taught her. "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pr— pray for us sinners—" She felt the beast's breath on her knees as it moved closer to her, and squeezed her eyes shut, too terrified to keep them open. "—now and at the hour of our death." The snout of the Beast was warm as it pressed against her hand and her breath hitched as she waited for the inevitable._

_Instead of the bite of razor-sharp teeth, something rough like sandpaper scraped over her palm. She was too confused and curious not to look, so she did. The monster's eyes were closed and it was licking her hand—gently, carefully, even._

_She reached her other hand down to touch its head, running her finger across the curve of its left horn. The beast closed its mouth, looked up at her with its strange yellow eyes and vanished, like it had never been there at all._

 

The next time— the last time Lucifer spoke to Ruby, He sounded so close, so awfully close, she thought she could feel His power brushing ice-cold against her cheek. He only said one word: **"Now."**

Her prison disappeared instantly. She could see again, and what she saw was the blinding brilliance of two archangels wearing human bodies, about to hurtle past her. One of them was Sam, filled with Lucifer's grace. She reached out, grabbed his wrist, and watched, horrified and fascinated, as two suns fell out of his body and plummeted faster and faster down. One was Lucifer, and the other, much smaller, but just as bright, was a human soul. Sam's soul. She watched them disappear into the endless depths beneath her and felt a pang of despair. She wasn't sure if it was for Lucifer, or Sam.

There was a stuttering noise above her and when she looked up she could see the tear in the worlds growing smaller as the portal between Earth and Lucifer's cage began to close. She willed herself up, pulling Sam's body with her, and took them both to the closest shelter she could find—a small abandoned house a few miles away.

********

Sam, whatever part of him she'd brought back, was still alive. He stayed unconscious for hours. She'd laid him down on the bare mattress some previous squatters had been kind enough to leave behind. He breathed evenly and looked like he was sleeping. She'd tried waking him up a few times, said his name, even slapped him twice, but he stayed asleep just the same.

She was starting to wonder if Lucifer had meant for her to inhabit his vessel. But he wasn't empty. There was something inside of Sam—an awareness, a _mind_ that felt a whole lot like him.

When he woke up, exactly six hours later, he looked at her and asked, "What happened?"

"I'm not really sure," she said. "You were falling into the cage. I saved you. Well, some of you."

"Some?" he didn't seem alarmed at all, just curious.

"I saw your soul fall. With Lucifer. But I caught the rest of you."

"Huh." He stood up and rolled his head to the left and right, then flexed his fingers experimentally. "I don't feel that different." He looked down at himself, at his blood-stained jacket and pulled it off, letting it fall to the dusty floor. Then he stuck his finger through the bullet hole in his over-shirt, unbuttoned it, and pulled it off, followed shortly thereafter by the t-shirt beneath. There was dried blood on his chest and a smudge along the side of his abdominals, but his skin was whole. "Where are we?"

"Some house."

"Think the water works?"

She shrugged.

He slipped out of his pants and went in search of the bathroom wearing only his briefs and socks.

 _Works for me,_ Ruby thought to herself, smiling just a little. She'd always thought Sam could stand to be a little less modest.

*******

After his shower, Sam came back out to her, completely naked and dripping water everywhere. "I don't have a towel."

"Nope," she smirked up at him. "But, thanks to me, you do have clean clothes." She pointed to the small pile of t-shirts and pair of jeans she'd swiped from a nearby strip mall while he'd been showering.

He crouched down and looked at the pile. "No underwear?"

"Ingrate. We can get you some later."

Sam slipped into the jeans and shook his head quickly, from side to side, sending water flying everywhere.

"Hey, watch it!" she yelled.

He grabbed a gray shirt from the pile and slipped it on, rolling his shoulders back to test the size. She probably should have gotten him the XL, but the L fit a lot better. It really did. The remaining wet patches on his skin soaked through the fabric, leaving a heart shaped pattern on his lower back.

"I'm hungry."

"Okay."

"Where are we? Anywhere near a diner?"

"There's a Chinese place a few blocks down." She stood up and walked closer to him. "Of course, we don't have any money…"

"Does that matter?"

"Nope."

*******

They ordered roast duck, string beans with garlic, sesame noodles and wine.

It almost felt like a date. The conversation wasn't really standard date material, but the restaurant was nearly empty, so nobody gave them funny looks.

"So what happened after I died?" she asked, twirling a noodle onto her fork.

"You don't know?" Sam raised an eyebrow. "Lucifer brought you back, right? I figured you saw the whole thing."

"Didn't really work out that way," she chewed on her lip. "I couldn't see anything the whole year, I was just kind of…in a holding cell, I guess."

"Sounds boring."

"Yeah," she shrugged, "…but I was where I needed to be when you fell." She watched his face for a reaction of some sort, but it was neutral, his focus on the food on his plate. "What do you remember?" she asked.

"About what? Being Lucifer?"

She nodded.

He shrugged and pierced a string bean with his fork. "Not much. I was trying to fight him for control at first, but…" He shook his head and his lips quirked slightly. "…imagine an ant trying to hold off a tidal wave, and you'll get the idea."

"He's our God for a reason," she said, quietly. "So how'd you do it? Did somebody push you? Did Michael—"

"I pulled Michael down with us. He was using Adam as a vessel."

"Adam your half-brother? The one you said got eaten by ghouls."

"That's the one."

"But how? You can't just pull an archangel somewhere they don't want to go."

Sam looked up at her thoughtfully. "Dean showed up and no matter what Lucifer did, he wouldn't give up. He wouldn't leave. He just kept saying he was there for me. I broke through. Either that or Lucifer let me take over."

"Huh." What else could she say to that, really? "Speaking of, when are you planning on checking in on Dean?"

"I'm not."

If the table they were sitting at suddenly came alive and started dancing, she'd have been less surprised than she was at that moment.

"Your brother, your always-joined-at-the-hip brother…you don't want to make sure he's okay?"

"He's fine. I made him promise to move on, not to try to get me out." Sam furrowed his brow for a moment. "He probably will anyway. But he won't get anywhere."

Ruby stared at him. "So you don't want to go say hi? Tell him you're okay?"

"If I do that, we'll be right back where we started. If he got out of the life…he should stay out."

"Okay. Fine. Just thought I'd ask." She ate a piece of roast duck and chewed it thoughtfully. "So, what do you want to do?"

"Hunt." His mouth curved into something like a smile. "There's always things that needs killing."

"We need weapons."

"And somewhere to put them. A car with a big trunk." He finished the last of the water in his cup. "There's a used car lot down the highway, I think."

"Meet you there?" she asked.

"Meet you there," Sam said. He excused himself to go use the bathroom, slipped out the back door instead, and Ruby vanished, waiting for him at the Lawrence Dodge Dealership.

Sam picked out a Charger, and Ruby distracted the two salesmen while he slipped away for a test drive. When they caught on, Ruby knocked them out—one with a punch, one with a kick to the head. Then she joined Sam in the Charger.

"I like it," she said, running her hand over the pleather of the seat.

"Gets good mileage."

"Weapons?"

"Yup. I know this highway. There's an Army Surplus store ten miles from here. We'll stock up there. Pick up some underwear, too."

She stuck her tongue out at him.

 

 

 

They got all the basics they needed that night just after the Surplus Store closed, and went back on the road. Sam started heading north, on a whim, from what Ruby could tell.

He pulled over at a rest stop and picked up a local paper. A few minutes later he pointed at a headline on page three. "Werewolf."

"Yeah?"

"Missing heart."

"Wrong moon phase, though. This happened two days ago."

"Maybe this one can change at will?"

"We'll need silver."

"Pawn shop's a good bet."

"We'd still have to melt it down though."

Sam made a sharp left and took a u-turn. "Drugstore back this way."

"Drugstore?"

"Yeah, I've got an idea. Something I always wanted to try, actually."

His idea turned out to be colloidal silver.

They picked up syringes along with the liquid silver and she filled them while he drove. They pulled over at the side of the road near the farm where he suspected the werewolf was holing up and filled some of the shotgun shells with the suspension as well, blending it with rock salt.

"Tasty."

"Mm. Should hurt like a bitch. Even if it doesn't kill it, it'll slow it down." He loaded his shotgun and pocketed three of the syringes, leaving her with the other seven and a spare Bowie knife. She missed her blade, but she'd get it back, eventually.

"You really want to do this at night?" she asked.

"Yeah, it'll be easier to—" Sam brought his hand to the bridge of his nose and clenched his eyes shut, repressing a wince of pain. "— figure out it's really a werewolf that way."

"You okay?"

"I'm fine. Just a headache." He grabbed his machete from the trunk and slid the false bottom back into place, hiding their newly acquired arsenal. "Let's go."

It might have just been a headache, but that seemed unlikely. If she was right, it was the first sign of demon-blood withdrawal. She hadn't broached the subject yet because she had no idea how this new Sam would react. She'd have to mention it at exactly the right moment. Or, if she had her way, she wouldn't have to mention it at all. He'd come to her.

They walked slowly towards the old barn. It had been empty for years, the last farmhouse in the area. Far enough away to not draw attention, but close enough to get to the more populated areas nearby easily on four legs. She smelled them when they were about fifty feet away. _Them_ , not it. "There's more than one."

"Good. One would've been too easy, anyway." Sam picked up his pace, and started moving towards the left side of the barn.

"They'll hear us, you know," she whispered under her breath.

"I'm counting on it. When they come for me, I'll keep 'em busy, and you can give them their shots."

"That plan sucks, Sam."

"You got a better one?" he smirked.

Smirked. He was enjoying himself.

She ran after him and vanished as soon as she saw the first amber eyed, sharp-toothed human bounding towards them on arms and legs. With perfect precision, she stepped into the world again right behind the werewolf about to tackle Sam and wrapped her arm around its throat.

Sam raised his machete, ready to block and took a step back.

She pushed the plunger on the syringe and sent the silver streaming into the werewolf's throat. It let out an angry noise—half-scream, half-yelp and started thrashing violently in her grip. She let go and pushed herself out of the way as Sam brought his machete slicing through the air. He severed the werewolf's head and had just enough time to bring his blade back up as the next two ran at them.

Ruby shook her head. "I can't get both of them at once, Sam."

"Then just get one!" he snapped. He threw his machete to the ground and pulled out his shotgun instead.

She ducked, running at the wolf on the right, throwing herself at it. They grappled until she positioned herself underneath it ‚ at an angle where she could keep her eyes on Sam. The other bounded towards Sam and he aimed his gun, firing off a round and then another. He nicked it in the shoulder with the first round, but missed his second shot.

Ruby growled in frustration, jabbed the syringe into the wolf above her and then threw her hand, palm-out towards the wolf running at Sam, knocking it out of the way at the very last second with a blast of power.

The wolf above her foamed at the mouth, dribbling onto her face. "Iieew," she muttered, shoving it off of her. It landed with a whimper, arms tucked in at an awkward, inhuman angle. She brought her foot down on its neck and twisted sharply, until she heard a snap.

Sam spun around to chase the wolf with his blade but it had smartened up and was running away faster than Sam could follow. He hurried to reload his gun, but wasn't fast enough.

"We scared it off. If it's smart, it'll leave town."

Sam snarled, and threw his shotgun to the ground angrily. "We'll track it down. It can't have gone too far. Can you follow it?"

She rolled her eyes at him. "If I had a clue where it was, sure. But I'm not gonna zap all over the place hunting down one stray. Come on, Sam. We'll call it a night and then try again in the—"

"Down!" Sam yelled, as he dropped into the grass and rolled, picking up his shotgun and leveling it at the werewolf running at them. He fired off a shot right when it was about fifteen feet away, throwing it off course. Its momentum carried it forwards and it crashed right into Ruby, raking her across the back with its claws.

"Ow! Dammit," she yelled, wincing at the torn flesh. The thing's razor-like nails had ripped through her jacket like it was tissue paper.

Sam stood and fired off another shot, and the wolf's legs gave out. He walked over to its fallen form, crouched down on top of it and snapped its neck with one sharp pull of his hands.

Ruby could smell sulfur in the air, from her own wounds, but from Sam too, the beads of his sweat on his brow reeked of them. He wasn't sweating just from the exertion.

She pulled off her torn jacket gingerly, and felt Sam's eyes locked on her as she let it fall to the ground. She lifted up the bottom of her shirt and turned her head as best as she could, trying to get a look at the damage. "I've had worse," she said, turning back to Sam.

He was still staring at her, and his eyes had gone glassy, fixated on her bloodstained finger-tips.

"Don't worry, it's the bite that turns you, not the scratches. Plus--" She lifted the shirt up again to show him the wound. "Demonic immunity. I'll heal quick."

 

_Everything smelled of death. Every house, every alley. There were people dead or dying lining the streets and rats as large as house-cats running past her feet. Even inside the church, amidst the faded scent of frankincense and old wood there was the unmistakable odor of decay. That didn't stop her from praying, though. She had nothing left to try. She prayed that her father would recover, that her failure with the doctor wouldn't prove to be his death sentence._

_"Holy God," she began again, "forgive me—"_

_"What should you be forgiven for, exactly?" said a voice from right next to her._

_She looked up and saw a man next to her. He wore the robes of a priest. His grey hair looked silver in the candle-light of the church and his eyes looked so dark they seemed solid black._

_"My father is sick," she swallowed past the lump in her throat. "He's dying."_

_"Did you make him sick?" the older man asked._

_"No! Of course not, I'm praying that he—"_

_"Then why are you asking for forgiveness?"_

_"Because…I don't know what else to do. I went to the doctor and asked him to come with me but he said it was too late, he closed the door." She took a shaky breath and brought her fingers down to the small coin-purse by her waist. "I don't want him to die. My mother, she…" She swallowed again, anger warring with despair. "He's all I have left."_

_The priest sighed solemnly and looked at the crucifix hanging at the front of the church. "Well, _you_ certainly don't need to ask for forgiveness, my child. He died for your sins: your lord and savior."_

_She nodded, trying to find comfort in the priest's words though she felt none._

_"The real question of course is whether your god cares enough to do anything to help you."_

_"Father?"_

_"He's let so many die already. Nearly this whole town. Your mother and now your father..." His eyes turned to her and looked down at her hand. "And you."_

_"Me?" She followed his gaze and saw an ugly black mark on the back of her hand. When she lifted it up closer, it smelled foul. Like death. "No, I— this wasn't here this morning."_

_"The Lord works swiftly," the priest said, shaking his head. "You have a few days at most. Run back to your father and spend your last hours together."_

_"No, I— I have to help him. I can't just go back without—" Her sorrow and fear overtook her and she sobbed uncontrollably._

_"A pity. What a strange god that he'd let his children suffer this way. Hardly deserving of worship."_

_She stared up at the priest in disbelief. "What?"_

_He smiled, showing teeth, and turned towards the cross, into the candle-light. His eyes didn't just look black, they were solid black—as shiny as a beetle._

_She stood and stumbled back a few steps, until her foot caught on the kneeler of the pew and she fell, landing in the center of the aisle._

_The priest was suddenly looking down at her, even though she hadn't seen him move. He held his hand down, offering to help her stand._

_"But I'm sick. If you touch me—"_

_"Unlike yours, my God protects me. Disease and death cannot touch me anymore."_

_She took his hand and stood, meeting his dark eyes with equal parts fear and fascination. "Who is your god?"_

_"Lucifer. The Morningstar. The most beautiful of all the angels. The only one who refused to bow to those beneath him. The one who made us what we are."_

_The candle-light flickered and seemed to grow brighter as her mind spun. "You mean the Devil?"_

_"Only to those who blame all the world's woes on Him. To us He is salvation. He knows what we are in our hearts and He loves us for it. He knows what this world is, and who it belongs to." He smiled and put his arm on her shoulder, turning her to face the cross. "I can heal you. Make you strong. I can give you the power to heal your father."_

_Her heart skipped a beat. "Yes." She only paused for a moment before adding, "Please, yes."_

_A cold gust of wind brushed her cheek, and for just a moment, she thought the crucifix looked slick with blood._

 

Ruby's breath was knocked out of her before she even registered Sam move. He crashed into her, big fingers wrapped tight around her shoulders, and pushed her face-down into the grass.

A buttonhole on the front of her shirt tore as Sam pushed the fabric up high with one hand, holding her legs down with the other. He brought his tongue across the largest of her wounds and lapped at it greedily.

For a moment, she was glad he couldn't see her face, because she couldn't suppress her grin. She focused on her torn flesh, making sure the skin stayed open, not wanting to discourage Sam. If he still had a taste for her blood, then everything she'd worked for wasn't in vain. She would make the Vessel ready again.

Sam made a contented noise deep in his throat and closed his mouth around the wound, pulling more blood to the surface. He worked his way from one cut to the next, until he reached the last, just by the small of her back. He ran his tongue across it, just once, and then stopped.

The click of his belt buckle was almost buried under the soft thrum of his power. Ruby felt it prickling under her skin, as he ran his mind over the contours of her soul. She wasn't sure he even knew what he was doing. Or how much she loved it.

She pushed herself up onto her forearms and looked back at him. His eyes were as dark as the night around them, and he was still focused on the marks across her back as he reached around her waist, unbuttoned her pants, yanked them off impatiently and pushed into her.

Sam had never been gentle. Back when she'd first kissed him, he'd fought her every step of the way. When he finally gave in it was in anger and self-loathing. Even after months together he didn't let himself feel pleasure. She saw him a few times, right as he caught himself—stopped himself from giving in completely. His face turned vicious and he'd fuck her like it was a battle. Afterwards, he'd look at her, green eyes wide with guilt, and tell her he was sorry. He was always sorry back in those days, apologizing like it was a path to redemption.

This was different. He moved just as forcefully, gripping her harder than he had any right to. If she were human, she'd be bruised, but she wasn't, and he knew it. His rhythm was steady, efficient, and he didn't stop once to focus on her. When he finished, he pushed himself off of her, stood up and got dressed. No kiss, not a single word of thanks or gratitude. Even when she looked in his mind there was no guilt, no trace of affection—just a hunger, sated.

"You really know how to make a girl feel special," she said, brushing a stray blade of grass from her hair.

"You're not a girl." Sam reached down and picked up her pants, shaking off the grass and dirt before handing them back to her.

"Fair enough," she said, frowning at her pants. She'd have to find a laundromat. Or new pants. They'd do for now, at any rate. "Let's stop somewhere that has a shower."

"Twenty miles to the nearest motel, at least."

"Need me to drive?" She looked him over. He seemed steadier than before, the little bit of blood he'd gotten from her wounds enough to stave off the withdrawal symptoms for now. But he'd need more soon.

"I'm fine. Let's go."

 

 

 

*******

The motel they found first was pretty shitty, even by their standards. The bed looked uneven, like one of the legs was just a little shorter than the others and the carpet was mostly stains. the shower, however, worked fine, much to Ruby's relief. She didn't bother with the towel when she came out, curious to see if she'd have the same effect on him he'd had on her. She'd expected to find Sam resting. They'd been at it for over 40 hours solid with no sleep. He had to be exhausted. But instead of being sprawled out on the bed starting to drift asleep, he was on the floor, in just his jeans, doing knuckle push-ups.

"You're not skeeved out by that carpet?" she asked, mildly nauseated.

"That's why I'm using my knuckles." He didn't even look up at her. His movements were steady and controlled. Perfect form.

"Thought you'd be tired after…everything." Sam used to fall asleep almost instantly after sex. She always thought it was kind of adorable. Tonight he'd driven them back here and had decided he still had the energy left for a workout.

"I'm not tired. Haven't been since you pulled me out."

"Huh." There was some significance to that, probably. A side-effect of being without his soul. "Shower's all yours."

"When I'm done," Sam said, continuing his push-ups.

Ruby debated on how long she should stand there naked and wait for him to notice. It's not like she was cold, but from the look of things Sam could keep going for another hour, and she'd still be standing there dripping on the ugly carpet.

Sam sat back on his heels and looked up her. "After I shower, we should track down that last werewolf."

Okay, now she was annoyed. "We can't. Not until it kills again. There's no spell I know that'll track some random werewolf. If I had its blood sure, but we didn't get any."

"Then we'll do it the old-fashioned way," Sam said and walked past her, towards the bathroom.

She sighed, annoyed at herself for being disappointed at his lack of interest, and jumped when his large hand slapped her on the ass.

*******

Ruby decided to pass the time by going shopping. She got back to the motel room just as Sam was pulling on a clean shirt. Phooey.

"Good idea," Sam said, nodding at the box in her hand.

"Well, I figured if we're gonna do research the _old-fashioned_ way…" She sat down at the rickety little table, opened the box and pulled out the brand new laptop.

Sam came closer and sniffed the air.

"New computer smell getting you all excited?" She smirked. Maybe there was some of the old Sam left in there after all.

"Something like that." He pulled his knife out of his hip sheath and kneeled next to the chair she was sitting on. Then he wrapped his hand around her left arm and turned it over, palm facing up. He drew the knife across her wrist slowly and then laid it down on the table.

She watched him close his mouth over the wound, pleased and confused at the same time. He drank for a full minute, efficient and quick, but with no sign of the desperate hunger or pleasure she'd grown to love so much. "You're not worried?" she asked when he pulled back.

"About what?" He ran his thumb across his lower lip and brought it to his mouth, cleaning up the last drop of blood like it was a paper cut. "The blood?" He tilted his head to the side. "I like to hunt. I want to be as strong as I can be. As long as I keep the dosage right and consistent, there's no danger." He looked at her. "I do need to get a back-up supply though."

"Sam, I'm right here. I can give you all you need."

"I can't trust you."

As much as she wanted to protest, she couldn't. If she was going to win his trust again she had to prove herself. She _would_ prove herself. She still had no idea what Lucifer had planned for her, why she'd been assigned to save this half of Sam. Whatever the reason, she had to make him trust her, and she would.

"We'll drain a few demons today. Stop by a hardware shop and get a cooling tank to keep the blood in. That way I have a back-up supply."

She nodded, keeping the bitterness off of her face. "Fine. Want me to track them down now?"

"No. I want you to teach me how to track them."

She raised an eyebrow. "What makes you think that's something I can teach you?"

"With enough of your blood I can kill demons. I can fling them around, send them to Hell, grab onto their souls and squeeze them until they pop. Last time around, that's all I wanted to learn. This time, I want you to teach me everything else."

It shouldn't have surprised her as much as it did, not really. After having Lucifer inside of him, Sam must have felt, on some level, how much she'd been holding back from him, and how much he was really capable of. Teaching him everything he could do was risky though. It would be a lot harder to keep secrets from him. Then again, maybe the time for secrets was over.

 

_One day, she came back to her little house at the edge of the forest to find it engulfed in flames. The house where she'd grown up, the one where she still lived with her now very old and weak, but still otherwise healthy father, was burning. Black smoke poured from the windows, and she could smell burning hair and flesh amongst the wood. She saw torches lying on the ground just outside her door, and Mr. Henry the baker, standing just a few feet away, watching like he was transfixed. He gave her an odd look—fear at first and then a slow, cold smile of pride. She ran forward to the flames, hoping she could put them out before her father was lost, but it was too late, and she knew it. She tried anyway, summoning a rainstorm as quickly as she could, dousing the fire and willing the rest of it away with nothing but brute force. Her eyes ached, and her nose bled, but she didn't care._

_The house was ruined, and her father's soul was long gone, even though his flesh was still smoldering. Mr. Henry was waiting for her when she came back out through the door._

_"We know what you are. You're not welcome here," he said with conviction._

_It took her a few tries before she could get her voice to work. "And my father? What has he ever done to you?"_

_"Any man who could have a thing like you for a daughter is already damned."_

_She didn't remember consciously deciding to hurt Mr. Henry, not exactly. She was so overcome with hate that everything fell completely still. All she could hear was her own blood, rushing through her veins, her heartbeat pounding in time with the lightning she'd called._

_She left her burnt house with the corpse of her father still lying on his bed and Mr. Henry's bones sticking out of the scorched earth._

 

*******

Sam was a quick study. Within twenty minutes he'd picked up on a demon a few miles away.

Ruby offered to go there and bring them back, but Sam wanted to drive, wanted to make sure he could track them and find them all on his own.

"Is teleportation something I can learn?" he asked, his eyes on the road.

"Maybe, maybe not. Do you know how we do it?"

"If I did, I wouldn't be asking you."

"A demonic soul is always being pulled back towards Hell. Without a body to anchor us, we're just treading water. Flesh makes it easier to stay topside. But…we can take that pull—let it start to drag us back down and shift the course. All you have to do is focus on a part of Hell that's underneath where you need to go, and then dig your heels into the ground before you get sucked back in."

He scoffed. "Sounds risky."

"Gets easier with practice."

"What else can I do?"

"Plenty. Anything Azazel's other kids could do, with practice. You started with visions, right? Try some other head-tricks. You're good at grabbing onto demons, and that's really just a part of telekinesis anyway. Or mind-reading. Getting into people's heads should be easy for you."

"People's heads? That include demons?"

"Demons were people once." She wasn't gonna give him the satisfaction of seeing her sweat. He'd already said he didn't trust her. That's why they were out on this milk-run to begin with.

Sam narrowed his eyes and stared out at the road. "We're close. He's less than ten miles away." His lips curled, but it was far too cold to be a smile.

"You know the trouble is—the stronger you get, the more likely they are to sense you coming, too."

"Could've mentioned that earlier."

"And you should have known that already. Come on, Sam. I might not have taught you everything last time, but you have to remember the basics, at least."

"Hex bags," he muttered. "We need black-bird bones, graveyard dust, asafoetida, vervain…"

"At least you remembered the ingredients." She gave his knee a pat. "Back in a bit."

It didn't take her long to find what she needed. Barely five minutes. That still didn't keep Sam from flinching in irritated surprise when she appeared back in the passenger seat without any forewarning.

She ignored him and set to work, spreading out the two square pieces of cloth on her lap and placing the right combination of herbs, dust and bone in the center of each. "There," she said and held up the two small bags she'd made, concentrating. " _Sumus occulo_." The bags glowed briefly as her magic gave them purpose. "Now we're off the radar for both sides."

"Thanks," Sam said. "And he hasn't moved, in case you're wondering."

"Did you also happen to pick up on the fact that he's got two friends with him?"

Sam's nostrils flared in annoyance.

"One plus two isn't one. Just saying."

"I can take three. No problem."

"Of course you can. And how many empty jugs did you bring?"

Sam didn't answer, which told her everything she needed to know.

"Good thing I brought extra then, isn't it?"

"What would I do without you?" he said evenly. "They're in there." He nodded at the bar on the side of the road.

"Public area. Gonna be tricky."

"No it won't." Sam smirked. "My brother and I spent our whole lives doing this kinda thing."

"Blood-letting demons?"

"Learning how to be quiet."

 

 

 

Ruby had to admit Sam was good. The demons hadn't cast them a second glance when they first walked in. Partially thanks to the hex bags, of course. The three of them were at a pool table in the back, watching the crowd, probably to pick out new meat-suits.

Sam stood by the bar, positioning himself so he could watch them in the mirror. He saw one of the demons follow a man into the bathroom, and went after him. Ruby followed a minute later and got to the bathroom just in time to see the human target piss himself when the demon's eyes flipped black.

Sam grabbed the demon by the shoulder, and the man ran. Ruby stopped him by the door, and knocked him unconscious, not wanting him to alert the rest of the patrons. She nudged her shopping bags to the side as the man slumped to the floor.

The demon Sam had grabbed found itself being pushed harder into the wall next to the hand dryer, by force alone, as Sam took a few steps back, his hand raised, palm out.

It glared at him and hissed, "Winchester."

"That's right," Sam said. "Call your friends in here."

"Why would I want to do that?" the demon asked.

"Who said anything about _want_?" The demon's eyes widened, and it started to gasp as Sam closed his fingers into a fist. "Call them. Now," Sam commanded.

The door swung open a few seconds later, and Ruby waved at the two newcomers before Sam had them pinned too. One flat against the ceiling and the other in-between two of the stall doors.

Ruby pulled the swinging door shut and locked it. Kneeling down, she reached into the two bags she'd carried in and pulled out a funnel and one of the empty gallon jugs. "Which one do you want me to start with?"

"Not this one," Sam said, focusing again on the demon in front of him. "He's nice and scared. I want to practice digging around in his brain a little."

"Okay, just don't dig too hard or you might snuff him out early."

"Wouldn't want that."

"No, we wouldn't. Don't waste a free refuel." Ruby flipped the top off of the empty jug and stuck the funnel inside of it, then she walked over to the scrawny black-eyed man pinned to her left and smiled up at him. "Hi."

"What are you doing?" The demon eyed her nervously as she reached into her pocket, pulled out the butterfly knife she'd picked up at the surplus store and flicked it open. "Let me go."

The demon opened its borrowed mouth and tried to escape its host, but Sam held it in place. Ruby didn't even have to help. He wasn't out of practice in the slightest, if anything, he'd gotten better.

"You're not going anywhere," Ruby looked him over, trying to decide which artery to start with. She brought her knife to his right knee, pulled the fabric of his jeans away from his leg, pierced the denim and started to cut carefully up, until most of his inner thigh was exposed. With one precise movement, she made a small but deep cut in his skin, piercing the femoral artery. Blood started to spill out and she brought the edge of the funnel to his skin, making sure to catch every drop. She pressed the plastic deep into his flesh, making the blood flow just a little faster.

On the other side of the bathroom, Sam's breath hitched and he turned to look over his shoulder at them. His eyes were dark with hunger and he looked at the jug in Ruby's hand like a starving man eyeing a sirloin steak. He turned away again, his shoulders rising and falling as he took deep steadying breaths. He wasn't going to hold out much longer. Soulless or not, the blood still had a hold on him. Good to know.

"That's Sam Winchester, isn't it?" the demon asked, his eyes locked on the back of Sam's head.

Holding the funnel steady, Ruby looked up at the possessed man. "You're a genius. Yes, that's Sam Winchester."

"I thought he threw himself into Lucifer's cage."

"He did."

"Is he going to kill me?"

"Probably."

"Pro— probably? Can you ask him not to?" The demon winced as Ruby forced more of his blood down the artery she'd opened. There was a real advantage to having fine-tuned her psychic muscles to this point. Throwing a person against a wall was easy, moving liquid through the arterial network of the human body was a different story entirely. She grabbed another empty jug and slipped it under the funnel, then capped the full jug and gave it a mental push towards the far wall, where her bags were.

"Ruby." Sam had pulled his own knife out of its sheath and was playing with it, his fingers flipping the knife handle back and forth.

"Yeah?"

"How much longer 'til your done with that one?"

"Not long," she smiled up at the demon and squeezed his heart one more time, forcing the rest of the blood down and out into the funnel.

"This one next," Sam said, his voice low. She could hear the impatience in his voice.

"All set," she said winking up at the demon. She carried the half full jug, another empty one, and the funnel over to Sam, who looked back at the drained demon.

"I don't want him telling anybody else what we did here," Sam said. He nodded towards the jug in Ruby's hand.

She pulled out the funnel and handed it to him. "Bottoms up."

Sam's jaw twitched, just once, and then he held the mouth of the jug up to his lips and drank.

Ruby watched the muscles in his neck work as he drained the half gallon she'd gathered. His power spiked, pushing harder into all of the demons in the room. Including her. Luckily, he could still tell her apart from the others, and instead of pinning her in place, his power thrummed through her soul—a heady mix of pleasure and pain so intense Ruby nearly fell to her knees. He let go of her seconds later, and she reached out to steady herself against the wall, stifling a moan.

She opened her eyes again when she heard the crackle of a demon burning behind her. He killed the demon she'd emptied in a matter of seconds. The metal frame of the stalls was warped from where Sam had pushed into him, and one of the stall doors swung open, creaking noisily, as the body fell to the floor with a muted thump.

Sam turned to her, his irises solid black and smiled. His teeth were stained red with blood as he leaned down to hand the now-empty jug back to her.

"Nicely done," she said, ignoring the shiver running down her spine for the moment. He didn't have to know the way he made her feel when he was like this. "Want me to get started on this one?" she asked, pointing up at the demon next to Sam.

He nodded and stepped away from the wall, leaving Ruby to her work, and walked to the center of the bathroom underneath the third demon that he'd pinned to the ceiling earlier. With a casual flick of his fingers he sent it crashing down to the floor. He pushed against the skinny, male body with the tip of his boot, rolling him over until he was lying on his back.

Ruby turned her focus back on the demon next to her and started to cut through his jeans, just above the knee. She pulled the fabric back and away from the skin and brought the funnel up to his bared leg, then picked up the empty jug and stuck it under the funnel. It wasn't until she brought the knife to his skin that she realized he hadn't made a sound. Not a peep. "Don't worry, it'll be over soon."

"Lucifer…" the demon said, so quietly it was nearly a whisper.

"No, that's Sam, Lucifer's vessel." She cut into the demon's thigh, catching the blood in her funnel, mentally speeding up the blood flow right away, not wanting to push their luck. Someone else was bound to need the bathroom in a few minutes, and it'd be better to be long gone before then.

The demon's black eyes whipped down to her. "I'm not an idiot, I can tell the difference between a human and our god. But if he's free, then doesn't that mean—"

"Not yet." Ruby watched the jug fill. "But soon." She looked up at him. "Have faith."

"I try, I do, but with the new king, it's hard."

"The new king?" Figured somebody had scrambled for the throne, but she had no idea who. Nobody left down there had any right holding the title. If anything, Sam was the next in line, soul or no.

"He kills the true believers. The ones he knows about anyway."

The jug was starting to fill and she pulled the next empty one towards her. Carefully she clamped down on the artery and swapped out the containers. "Who's the new king?"

He stared down at her. "You don't know?"

She smirked. "I've been out of the loop for a bit."

"Crowley."

"Crowley? Cross-roads Crowley?"

"What about Crowley?" Sam asked from behind her.

"Apparently he promoted himself to king of Hell," Ruby said.

"Did he?" Sam asked, tilting his head to catch the demon's eyes.

A warm drop fell on Ruby's hand. The funnel had slipped just the tiniest bit, but enough for some of the blood to trickle along the edge and down the side. She adjusted the funnel and caught the last few drops, throwing a smile to the demon.

He nodded at her and kept his head down, eyes turned away from Sam.

Carefully, Ruby put the jug down and wiped her thumb over the rim of the funnel to push what she could inside.

Sam caught her by the wrist just as she stood up. "You sure you got every drop?" he asked, his eyes still two black circles.

"Of course. See for yourself."

Sam brought her hand up to his mouth and sucked the blood off her thumb. Ruby could see the black from his irises bleed infinitesimally wider. He let go of her wrist, turned to the demon and narrowed his eyes. The man's body lit up gold, and the demon gasped as it burned from the inside out. The emptied shell fell to the floor.

"You know there were still _two_ souls in there, right?"

"The body was totally drained, he wouldn't have survived anyway."

"If you'd killed the demon, and left the human soul where it was, it would've gone where it belonged—up or down."

"Since when do you care?"

"I just thought you'd want to know." She glanced inside of Sam's mind, looking for some glimmer of remorse, or at least an acknowledgement of what he'd done. There was nothing—just a mild sense of satisfaction and an undercurrent of pride.

"One to go, Ruby. Get rid of these two corpses and I'll finish up the last one. Come back when you're done."

Something inside of her bristled at constantly being given orders. Back when she'd last been by Sam's side, she'd done as he asked most of the time, because it was part of the mission: win his trust, help him grow stronger, make him need her. But now she didn't have a plan. She didn't know what it was she was supposed to be guiding him towards. Tonight, it felt like he had a clearer path than she did, and that—she didn't like one bit.

*******

Over the next few weeks, Ruby stayed quiet. She watched, just like she'd done the first time around, when Sam was still young and as innocent as the Devil's true vessel could ever hope to be. She hadn't figured out this new configuration yet, but she would. Patience had always been her strong suit. That was one of the main reasons Lucifer and Lilith had chosen her. She was one of the few demons that could wait however long she had to for just the right moment.

So that's what she did.

Sam remembered what Lucifer had been capable of. He wrote up a list of every power, every ability he could think of. Ruby had to cross off nearly half of them. Some things were beyond him—strictly angel territory, others she thought he might be able to learn, but she didn't have a clue where to start. Quite a few were skills only incorporeal beings possessed, so those were a no-go. But even after editing down her list she had over three-dozen left that Sam was fully capable of learning, given enough blood and enough practice.

Some things came to him naturally. Telekinesis was something he'd had a predisposition towards even before she came to him, so it was just a matter of him understanding that he could move things that didn't have demons in them too. The lesson ended up being more about when to use tweezers instead of a sledgehammer. Sam was good at lifting things and hurtling them through the air, but when she tried to get him to open a soda can without touching it he spent a full two minutes trying to lift the tab only to end up crushing the whole can, covering them both in Dr. Pepper.

His physical strength had started to inch towards superhuman territory already, which made their hunts go that much faster. She was still stronger than him, in that respect, but he'd catch up soon enough.

Telepathy was third on Sam's list and even though Ruby would've much rather waited, she knew he'd figure it out on his own if he set his mind to it. He'd tried with the demon at the bar, even though she had no idea if he'd had any luck. She showed him only the basics, how to pick up on something she was trying to tell him, and how he could send a thought to her. Mind-control would require a lot more practice and a lot more blood. She expected fall-out within a matter of hours, thinking that he'd, in typical Sam fashion, practice and practice until he hit a wall and then practice again. She strengthened the defenses in her own mind, making sure to keep the important bits locked up tight where he couldn't get to them without her noticing. But the first day went by without incident. He wasn't all that interested in reading her thoughts, after all. He just liked the tactical advantage it would give them.

They moved right onto spell-work, number four on his list. She had a ton of knowledge to share, and true to her word, she taught Sam everything useful. Obfuscation, summonings, tracking spells. When she used a spell involving fire, she brought it to life with a thought, the small flame consuming the herbs in the bowl within seconds.

"You crossed that off the list," Sam said. "Fire."

"Because you can't call fire. Not yet."

"When?"

"When you're ready."

"I'm ready."

"No, you're not." She snapped, a small flame dancing on the tip of her pointer finger and brought it to his forearm.

"Ow!" he pulled his arm back and glared at the red circular burn on his skin.

The smell of singed arm-hair drifted into her nostrils and she gave Sam a look. "You're strong Sam, you're getting stronger, but you're not fire-proof, and until you can keep fire from burning you, you can't control it. Not completely."

"How long?"

"Don't know. It's not exactly part of the standard package, even where I come from."

"You use fire. Azazel used fire. All the time. He fed me his blood."

"He fed you three drops when you were a baby. That doesn't exactly make you his equal. Plus, he was one of the Fallen."

"As in…fallen angel?"

"No, a domino."

Sam glared at her.

"What other kind of Fallen could I possibly be talking about?" She huffed, thinking that quite possibly some of Sam's brains had stayed behind in the cage. "He used to be an angel. Only Lucifer kept his grace. All the angels that fell with him became something else."

"Demons." Sam's brow furrowed. "I killed Lilith and Alistair. Two of the strongest."

"Two of the strongest that came from humans. The Fallen were a whole different ballgame."

"Were?"

"Azazel was the last one." She crossed her arms over her chest. "Angels killed all the others."

"That's why Lilith was next in line."

"No, _you_ were next in line. But you weren't interested." Ruby eyed him curiously. "Any interest now?"

"In being king of Hell?" Sam scoffed. "No thanks."

"Why not? You'd have an army of demons. More than enough power to take down just about anything. You'd—"

"Do you think I'm stupid?"

A beat passed and Ruby watched him, cooly. "No."

"The only reason you're here with me now is because that's exactly what you want me to do. You think there's some way for me to break open the cage and free Lucifer again."

She kept looking at him, challenging him to go on. If there was ever a time to get it all out in the open, this was it. Better for him to ask the right questions now, then go poking around in her head once he figured out how. "I think there might be."

"It's not gonna happen." Sam stood, and walked over to the sink to get himself a glass of water. "I like it up here. I'm staying up here. And there's no way I'm _ever_ going to help you free Lucifer."

"Fine."

For just a second, Sam looked genuinely flustered. He looked like _Sam_ , and something in her gut clenched. She missed him. As frustrating as he'd been, she'd cared about him more than she should have. The man that damned the world out of love and a bone-deep need for revenge.

Revenge she understood.

_During her last minutes as a human, when they'd tied her down and burned her, the ropes cutting into her skin—she'd screamed: in fear at first, then in desperation, hoping that someone would take pity on her, that someone who she'd helped would defend her. But no one came to her aid. Twelve people watched, with eyes as cold as any demon's, and none of them shed a tear. The sky opened then, a heavy rain pouring down, the water hissing as it hit the flames. For a moment she thought her salvation had come, that the one she'd pledged herself to had sent the storm just for her. Lightning crashed, the fire grew weaker and she felt a righteous fury so strong and so pure that all her pain vanished._

_"You don't deserve this world," she said, her voice loud in the sudden quiet of the crowd. "I will live and I will take it from you." She meant every word, and as her body shut down, as the flesh around her eyes bubbled until she could no longer see, she felt herself shed her body. She slipped out of it like a snake shedding its skin and became something else. Wrath. Justice. The Devil's instrument._


	2. Chapter 2

 

They found a routine, moving from one hunt to the next, stopping only to clean themselves and their weapons. Sam didn't need to sleep, but he had to eat, and piss and do everything else a human had to. His physical needs hadn't gone away. They were all he had left. In most cases he treated them with detached practicality: food was sustenance not pleasure, exercise was a necessity if he wanted to stay at the top of his game—even though Ruby's blood was already making him stronger than he'd ever be on his own. But he had other needs, and they grew stronger the longer they were together.

The regular intake of blood was changing him, just like it had last time. It went from a supplement to a vitamin to a daily requirement. She could see it in the set of his shoulders, the way he squinted in the light, the small flickers of unease running through every inch of him when he waited a little longer than usual. He could tell himself the blood didn't control him all he wanted, and she had no doubt he could ignore the psychological longings it caused in him (assuming he even felt them), but there was a physical aspect to it too. Sam had always hated feeling weak, and even without his soul that was still true. Maybe even more so. He could have cut out the blood altogether, but considering the frequency of their hunts nowadays, his chances of survival would be drastically lower, even with her looking out for him. If he wanted to remain the hunter and not the prey, then he had no choice but to live up to his full demonically fueled potential.

Without his soul, Sam was ruthless. He used his powers without hesitation on anything and everything, wielding them like he'd been born to. She'd thought at first, that he couldn't feel anymore without his soul, but she was wrong. If anything, he seemed to take more pleasure in some things: a hunt that went well, the near-constant strengthening of his abilities. He might not understand the finer points of human emotion anymore, but that didn't mean he couldn't feel pleasure. This Sam was all about sating his hungers as quickly and efficiently as he could. More often than not, they left the motel beds untouched. Neither of them slept, and Sam had taken to fucking her right next to his latest kill. She complained about how hard it was to get blood and ichor out of her hair and clothes, but really more than anything else, she was fascinated. She'd seen demons that took less pleasure in a kill than Sam did.

*******

With the steady rate at which they'd been tracking down things to kill, Ruby thought she'd start to see a decline in the monster population, but instead they were seeing the opposite. There were more monsters than ever, and they were all acting strange. The werewolf shifting out of cycle had been the first sign that the rules were changing, but there were others. Vampires had started killing in broad daylight, and there were nests of them popping up _everywhere_.

As happy as Sam was about the endless supply of things to kill, she could tell he was confused, too. Something was definitely different. It was like the monsters were all upping their numbers—like they'd had an all-monster convention and come to the unanimous decision to have a population explosion.

One week, Sam and Ruby went through three vampire nests, all within 20 miles of each other. The last one housed eighteen vampires altogether. Sam had kept the last two alive, pinned against the wall, about ten feet apart.

"Your kind was nearly extinct a few years ago," Sam said, as he moved closer to the male vampire. "What changed?"

The vampire laughed bitterly and bared his fangs at Sam, but didn't answer. Blood dripped from his mouth onto his ragged t-shirt, and the cut Ruby had given him across his midsection earlier oozed sluggishly.

"Maybe I should rephrase the question." Sam lifted his hand and brought his fingers together in a fist.

Ruby could hear the vampire's ribs snap one by one as Sam crushed them with his mind.

The vampire's fangs retracted and he panted. "You think I can't take a little pain?"

"I'm sure you can," Sam said, nodding. "In fact, I bet you can take a whole lot." He picked up the small blowtorch Ruby had packed and held it up in front of the vampire's face. With the push of a button, a small blue flame appeared. Sam lowered it towards the vampire's bleeding stomach. The flames took hold of the edges of the torn cotton of the t-shirt, growing larger as the vampire began to scream.

"Tell me what you're planning," Sam repeated.

"Fuck you!" The vampire yelled as the fire reached higher, working its way up his chest.

Sam narrowed his eyes. **"Tell me."**

His voice was quiet, but heavy with power. Ruby shuddered with it, turning away from Sam to look at the other surviving vampire. She was young, and her blonde hair was streaked with blood. If Ruby was right, she hadn't been a vampire for long at all. She still smelled mostly human.

"You should tell us what you know," Ruby said to her, holding up the Bowie knife she'd borrowed from Sam. She still didn't have her own blade back. Dean had it, according to Sam—quite possibly the only reason she did want to meet up with him again sometime soon. It wasn't just a useful tool, that blade had been a gift to her. It had sentimental value. And it killed like nobody's business. "Sam's not real patient these days."

The smell of burning flesh got stronger and the male vampire's screams got louder, then died out completely. When Ruby turned to look over her shoulder she saw why. He no longer had a head.

Sam was cleaning his bloodied machete. She didn't have a lot of time left with the last survivor.

"Tell us what you know. Anything—even if it doesn't seem important," Ruby said to the frightened monster.

"And you'll let me go?" she asked, hopefully.

"No. But it'll hurt less before you die," Ruby promised.

"I don't— I don't know much. Ron—" The blonde strained against the invisible hold on her body, her head slowly turning to the headless corpse. Her face crumpled. "We met three days ago, and then he told me he could make me live forever. Stay young forever. It sounded like a good idea, I guess."

"There were a lot of others with you."

She nodded. "We're supposed to turn two a week. That's what Ron told us."

Two a week. That wasn't normal behavior for vampires at all. If they followed that plan, they'd be out of food in a matter of months. "Why so many?"

"Because that's what _He_ wants us to do."

"Ron?" Ruby asked.

"No," Sam said, walking up next to her. "Somebody higher up." He stuck his machete into the floor beside him, crouched down and looked the vampire in the eyes. "Tell me about him. Who is he?"

The woman swallowed and kept her mouth closed. Tears started to form in her eyes but she wasn't going to speak.

Ruby let out a sigh. She'd done her good deed for the day. If the vampire was too dumb to take her advice, it wasn't her fault. As expected, Sam pulled out the small torch again. "You know, I got that so we could make Crème Brûlée," Ruby said.

Sam pushed the button on the torch and brought the flame closer and closer to the vampire's cheek. Her skin started to blister, and she opened her mouth to cry out in pain before Sam let go of the button.

"Our— our father. The father of all vampires. He talks to us. Right into our brains."

"What does he tell you?" Sam asked. He started playing with the small torch, turning the grip around in his fingers and never once took his eyes off his target.

"That— that we're at war. That we need to— to multiply." She looked up at Sam. "Please don't kill me. I haven't even—I haven't even hurt anybody, I haven't even had any human blood, just— just Ron's. Please—"

"Tell me where to find your father," Sam said.

She shook her head. "I don't know where…when he talks to us, he's in our heads." She let out a shaky breath. "That's all I know."

"Thank you." Sam picked up his machete again, and stood.

Ruby turned to Sam curiously. She'd expected him to try to pull more information out of the girl by motivating her with pain.

Sam turned, as if to leave, and then swung back around, lopping off the vampire's head. It rolled across the floor and landed by Ruby's boot. "Let's go."

Ruby ran her finger over the stump of the vampire's neck and stared at it thoughtfully.

 

Sam wasn't happy that night after that hunt, despite the fact that the two of them had taken down eighteen vampires. The little information he'd gotten about the vampire 'father,' was all he was thinking about. Ruby could see it in the set of his jaw. He'd driven in silence for the first five miles.

"Did you get anything from her? Any idea about where we should start looking?" she asked, not sure if Sam had tried to get inside the vampires' heads at all.

"No," Sam snapped as he shifted lanes. "Nothing useful. Glimpses of a face—the father-vamp's face, but that's it." His fingers curled tightly around the steering wheel. "I want to find him, Ruby. If he's who they say, then he's the strongest vampire there is. The oldest." He glanced over to her and his eyes were eager. "We track down every nest, every fang until somebody tells us where he is."

"Okay," Ruby said. "Or…you could find us a motel or an empty shack somewhere, give me a few minutes and I can find him for you. But you know, I don't want to spoil your fun."

Sam stared at her. "You can track him? How?"

"I took some of the vamps' blood. Got a little bit from all eighteen of them. Should be enough to do a pretty good trace on their maker, and his maker, and so forth."

"That's awesome," Sam took the next exit, and threw her what counted for a smile these days. "Really. Good work."

"It's blood-magic, Sam. It's what I do," she said matter-of-factly.

*******

_"Vim sanguinis est, sanguis est vita" Ruby said, as she did what the demon had told her to do. She ran her thumb across her father's sweat-slicked forehead, leaving a broad steak of her own blood behind._

_Her father groaned softly in his sleep, shifting under the thin blanket. His eyes fluttered a bit, but never opened all the way._

_"Sanguis meus ad te, mea vita tua, revenio. Revenio," Ruby said, finishing the mark exactly the way the demon had shown her._

_Demon. She'd met a demon today. She'd met a demon and she'd pledged herself to it and to the Devil._

_Her father opened his eyes, and smiled at her as the open sores covering his arms and legs all began to close._

 

*******

Ruby's spell worked just as well as she knew it would, and they hit the road right after Sam finished drinking from her—three times what he normally took. By the time he let go of her arm, his eyes had shifted from hazel to solid black.

The father vampire was in Lansing, Michigan, so they had to drive for fourteen hours. Sam drove nearly the whole stretch, but when they were only three miles away he pulled over and flipped open his pocket knife. "This thing is ancient. I need to be as strong as I can. As strong as I was with Lilith, maybe."

"Help yourself, but it might be smarter to hit the backup supply, don't you think?" She wasn't surprised by his decision, but she was damn curious to see how he'd deal with the after-effects. Coming down was going to a bitch, no matter how stoic he was. "Quicker too, drinking what we've got back there. I've seen you chug whiskey."

"Much quicker." His jaw twitched and he nodded to himself. "And that way I've got you if I need more after we head in." The door swung open as he climbed out and made his way back to the trunk.

Ruby slid into the driver's seat, angled the side mirror so she could see him, and watched him down half a gallon, then the other half. She could feel his power grow, see it undulating under his skin, glowing yellow and black in his veins. When he brought the jug back down, his chest was heaving, he was panting from the rush of the blood, his body temperature and pulse all climbing as they adjusted to the sudden influx. Even without the blinding white glow of his soul, he was beautiful. She'd always thought so, and not just because of the pleasant packaging. Underneath his skin he was something else entirely.

As a demon, she could see Hell and Heaven in others. She could see when someone else was possessed, the demonic soul and human soul both inhabiting the same bodily space. It was always an interesting thing to see how the human souls reacted. Some demons killed the human inside the instant they took over. It was easier that way, certainly, but not recommended. For one thing, in a lot of cases the soul would go straight to Heaven, and giving the Host more power was never advisable. In some cases, the souls were already Hell-bound, and then you'd run the risk of seeing them again at some point. Demons didn't typically forget how they'd died or why, and they never forgave. The human souls nearly always fought back at first. Depending on the strength of the demon it was either a piece of cake to subdue them, or an effort in futility. Some human souls were insanely tenacious.

Sam's soul had been one of the latter. Ruby had heard Meg's stories about when she'd possessed him. She hadn't just put on the binding lock to keep herself in Sam's body, she'd needed it to keep him under.

When Ruby had first met Sam, his soul had been as bright as any human's, brighter even, matched only by Dean's own. The more of her blood Sam drank, the more his soul began to change, the few streaks of yellow from Azazel's blood turning darker and more pronounced as her blood fed his gifts. Now, Sam was empty; he held none of the light he used to, but when he drank from her he still lit up on the inside in all the same places, like his body remembered the contours of its now missing soul and was trying to recreate it. The yellow streaks were still there, and traces of Lucifer's own grace were burnt into him—metaphysical scars that drank in her power and glowed with it—a second network of veins and nerves tailor-made for the Devil's vessel.

When Sam sat back down next to her, this time in the passenger seat, he barely looked human. His eyes were solid black on the outside, and underneath they glowed with dark light, the power spreading through his whole body, pulsing in his veins like a living thing. She pulled back out onto the road, trying her best not to keep looking at him out of the corner of her eye.

It was a good thing Ruby was driving, she decided, when she realized Sam hadn't stopped staring at his hand since he'd gotten back into the car.

"Need a manicure?" she asked.

"I remember this. Having this much power. I used to…it used to make me feel incredible. It made me feel invincible. Like a god."

"What do you feel now?"

"Strong. Really strong. I'll be able to rip that vampire to pieces."

"That's it? It doesn't make you feel good?" she asked curiously. "Or guilty?"

"Why should I feel guilty?"

"You shouldn't. You just— you used to get all kinds of mixed-up from this. Happy, guilty, angry and horny all at the same time."

He shrugged, and smirked. "Maybe a little horny." He rolled down the window and stuck his hand out, playing with the air. "But first we've got the hunt of the year."

Ruby pulled the car further down the dirt road and slowed, shutting off the engine well before they got to their goal.

They took the rest of the stretch by foot and stopped just outside of a large old Victorian house. Sam had his machete, she had her axe.

Ruby could smell the blood the second they got to the front gate. Vampire blood. She held her arm out to hold Sam back. "Somebody beat us here."

"What? Who?" Sam sounded genuinely upset. Likely because whoever it was had picked the same hunt.

"If you shut up maybe we'll find out," she snapped. _Remember, Sam, radio silence._ She wanted to keep him out of her head as much as possible, but with this kind of prey, silence was a necessity.

Sam pointed towards the side of the house, and Ruby nodded. It was a good idea to scope out the yard anyway, but they'd be much better off finding a side entrance or a window to slip in through. They walked quietly over the beautifully kept lawn but saw no one. Sam crouched by the corner of the house and waited for Ruby to join him. There was a sound to their left, a branch snapping just on the other side of the house. They stood, Sam's hand gripping his machete tightly. Ruby nodded to Sam and they both turned, ready to take down a whole army of vamps if they had to. But instead they saw a small, dark-haired human woman climbing up the rear stairs to the house. She was holding a slim short, blood-stained sword.

"Hunter," Sam whispered.

 _Captain Obvious,_ Ruby thought. _Let's follow her in._ There wasn't any risk if the woman spotted them. Plus she could see by the slight twitch in Sam's lips how badly he wanted to get to the father vampire before anyone else had a chance.

They moved, jogging over to the rear door when suddenly, something leapt down from above them. It moved fast enough to look like a blur, but Ruby spotted the mouthful of shark teeth instantly. The vamp landed between her and Sam, and immediately lunged, its fangs bared at Ruby. She knocked it off course with a blast of energy and looked over to Sam just in time to see two more vamps jump on top of him. Perfect.

Sam let out a snarl and stood right back up, throwing off the two vamps like no human could have. He'd dropped his machete, but didn't seem to care, turning towards the one closest to him with a wicked smile on his face. He flung his arm forward, holding his palm out towards the vampire. It started to choke, clutching weakly at its throat, and for a stunned half-second Ruby thought Sam had figured out how to pull a monster's soul from its body too. And then it's head just popped right off, showering the lawn in blood.

The other vampire took a few shocked steps backwards as Sam turned towards it.

Ruby had nearly forgotten about the third until she saw him running past her, eager to get away—clearly the smartest of the three. But Ruby knew how much Sam hated it when they got away, so she took aim and threw her axe, sinking it into the vampire's shoulder. He slowed but kept limping ahead as she followed him. She was less than a foot away when a shot rang out, followed by another.

The vampire fell to the ground and twitched in pain. He didn't look like he was doing so well. In fact he looked exactly like a vampire dosed with dead-man's blood. The bullets must have been filled with it.

The gun fired again, and Ruby turned towards the sound to see Dean Winchester holding a shotgun. He aimed the gun at her and fired again before she could even react. She stumbled back a few steps from the impact.

"Can't shoot a demon with just any old gun," she said. "Thought you knew better, Dean." She stuck her finger through the hole in her shirt, annoyed. The fabric was warm to the touch.

"Thought you were dead." Dean fired the shotgun again, his face contorted in pure rage.

"Ow!" Ruby yelled. She turned back to see what the hell was keeping Sam, just in time to see him drop the vampire he'd killed. Or rather—the vampire he'd suspended in mid-air and torn into five bloody chunks. It hit the grass in a messy series of thumps as Sam turned to look at her, and then his brother.

"Dean?" Sam's voice was surprised. He walked up next to Ruby and stared at the bullet holes in her shirt, cocking his head to the side. "You okay?"

"Stings a little," she muttered.

Sam turned back to Dean and looked like he was about to say something.

"How'd you get out of your cage, huh?" Dean asked, venom dripping from his voice. "Was it her?"

"I'm not Lucifer," Sam said, taking another step forward.

"Sure you're not." Dean raised his shotgun and aimed it at Sam's face. "I know this won't kill you either, but hopefully it'll get you to shut up."

"Dean, really. It's me— it's Sam."

The older Winchester looked at Sam with cold fury. "Last time I checked, my brother was stuck in the Devil's time-out box." He pulled the pump back on his shotgun, loading another shell. "You're not my brother. My _brother_ would have told me if he'd come back from the dead." He took a few steps closer to Sam but never lowered his gun. "My brother wouldn't have left me thinking his soul was rotting in Hell, if he was really out here on a reunion tour with his demon groupie." Dean threw a glare at Ruby and then focused again immediately on Sam. "Oh yeah, and my brother kills vampires with a sword, not some kinda psychic hacksaw."

"Dean—" Sam said again, raising his hands up in what was probably supposed to be a placating gesture.

The problem of course, was that Dean was right. This Sam wasn't his brother. He didn't even have the emotional depth to placate. "It's complicated," Ruby said.

"You shut your mouth," Dean snarled.

"What the hell's all this?" said an unfamiliar voice from behind them.

Ruby turned around and saw a tall, older, bald man walking towards them holding a machete wet with blood. There were two others trailing behind him. The dark-haired woman from earlier and a blond man. All of them were glaring at her and Sam. Hunters: such a welcoming group.

"Nothing I can't handle," Dean said, never taking his eyes off of Sam.

The older man walked around them, until he was standing next to Dean. He looked from Ruby to Sam, squinted a bit and said, "Call me crazy, but that sure looks a whole lot like the picture of your brother you showed me."

"Well it ain't him," Dean said. "Just haven't figured out what's wearing his face."

Sam rolled his eyes. "You know what, fine? You don't believe me, let me prove it to you. Got some holy water?"

"Holy water wouldn't do a damn thing to the Devil. Pretty sure none of our other tests would work either. So why don't you do us both a favor and shut the hell up while I figure out what to do with you."

Sam looked vaguely offended for a second and then suddenly, purposefully, dropped to his knees and brought his hands up behind his head.

 _What are you doing?_ Ruby asked Sam, wondering if he'd lost his sense of judgement along with soul.

_Trust me._

_Trust you to what? Get us captured?_

_Exactly._

_Awesome._ She considered taking down Dean and all the others but then thought better of it. If Sam wanted his little reunion, he could have it. With a resigned sigh she closed her eyes and dropped to her knees in the muddy earth, next to Sam.

Within minutes, they'd been unceremoniously manhandled towards waiting vehicles. Vans, probably. She assumed that's what they were, but wasn't actually sure since they'd been kind enough to cover her head with some kind of demon-binding enchanted sack, so she couldn't disappear or smoke away. Or see. She could still listen, though, and she could still talk to Sam.

By her guess, they were traveling north at around 85 miles an hour. They'd taken Sam to a separate van, and chained him in the back, just like her. Sam was pissed, mostly because he was convinced they'd captured the father vampire, an _alpha_ from what Dean was saying, and were bringing him somewhere else. Three vehicles left the vampires' hideout, but only two were still on the road together now.

 _Want to blow this moving Popsicle stand?_ Ruby asked, wondering how big a dent Sam would make in the truck by hurtling one of his captors against it.

_No. I want to follow the alpha. They took him, and I want to know where._

_You don't think they killed him?_

_No. I saw them walking him past us to the third van, dosed to the gills with dead man's blood. If they'd wanted him dead they would've done it already._

_Unless he can't be killed._

_Everything can be killed._

Ruby laughed to herself. _Coming from you, that's pretty funny. Especially considering how often you've come back._ One of the guards sitting near her must have disliked the motion because he rapped her on the knee with his rifle.

"Aww come on, that was funny," she said.

"Quiet, demon," said a male voice. Possibly the blond one from earlier.

"Are we there yet?" Ruby asked, deciding she was bored. "Where are we going, anyway?"

"None of your business," said the same voice. "Quiet, or I'll give you a holy water bath."

Ruby sighed theatrically and started whistling instead, happy to be getting under their skin. Let them douse her. She'd gone through so much worse, so many times, it might actually feel invigorating.

 

The water was colder than she'd expected. It was spring, nearly summer and when she did her wash the water always felt warm. Even when she bathed, which she usually did early in the evening, just before the sun went down, the water had been warm. But today it was cold.

"If you float, then you're guilty," the judge had said.

"She's the Devil's bride, 'course she's guilty." Mr. Price said, spitting at her feet as he helped lift her up. They'd tied her hands firmly behind her back, with rough rope that cut into her wrists. She could feel a trickle of blood running into her palm, and thought of eight different spells she could cast of them, all of them backed by the power of her own life-force. She could kill them all without ever moving a muscle.

Instead, she let them throw her into the water. And it was cold.

She sank straight down, pulling herself down towards the rocky floor of the lake with her will. I'd like to see Mr. Price stand trial, she thought to herself. He was more buoyant than the whole rest of the group of her accusers put together.

She studied the rocks on the floor and wondered how long she should stay down. She'd cast a breathing spell on herself hours ago and the water turned to air around her, a tightly wound bubble, encompassing just her head, but enough to keep her safe for hours more. She turned and looked up at the surface, trying to see what the men were doing.

'Bride of the Devil,' she thought. 'Maybe someday.' The demon had taught her a great deal of their god, Lucifer, and she'd taken to praying to him, as her demon did. The prayers were very similar to the ones her father had taught her—the prayers to the god above, who never answered. The difference was that Lucifer answered her. Not always, but enough. She knew his voice and it was beautiful—harp strings and church bells and glass breaking all mixed together. He didn't speak with words, but she understood them nonetheless.

'How long do I wait, father?' she asked. 'And where do I go now? I've overstayed my welcome again.'

There was no answer this time, so either her question wasn't interesting enough for her God, or he was busy with something else.

She started to turn lazily in the water, swimming along the bottom, to cross the floor of the lake. If they were going to make sure she was dead, they'd have already done so by now. Her things were buried on the far side, just inside of the forest, by a thick pine tree. Her strokes were steady and slow, barely moving the water. She didn't want to attract any attention, in case anyone was still watching the lake for signs of her inevitable floating.

The center of the lake was even colder. It felt like ice, and the floor dropped off deeply, so deeply, she decided to stay where she was. She swam faster, suddenly filled with unease. The water beneath her was heavy with silt, and she couldn't see anything past her feet. For just a moment, she thought she saw something move—something long and thin, and impossibly fast.

She blinked, trying to clear her eyes as her hand moved up to her breastbone, searching for the red gem her mother had given her, but of course it wasn't there. She'd buried it, along with the rest of her belongings. Her feet moved faster and kicked as hard as she could, eager to get past the icy center of the lake.

Whatever it was didn't chase her. In fact, after she'd gotten away from the center of the lake she was pretty sure it had never been there at all, not really. She'd caught another glimpse of that other place. It was real, but it wasn't here, it wasn't now.

 

*******

By the time the van she was in pulled over, her shirt and pants were soaked. They didn't pull the sigil-covered bag off of her head until they were deep inside whatever building they'd gone into. She heard Sam's voice as they pushed her further forward, still calmly trying to reason with Dean, who was well past that point.

They took her to a room far enough away that she couldn't hear Sam anymore, and courtesy of the wards on the walls, she couldn't talk to him with her mind, either. Perfect. She walked to the one lone chair sitting in the center of the room and sat down, turning to smile at her guards—the black haired woman still busy spray-painting a devil's trap around her chair, and the blond man who'd taken position by the side of the door and was watching her like she'd make a break for it at any second.

The circle closed around Ruby. She felt its energies snap shut, circuit completed. The dark-haired hunter stood up and put the cap back on her spray paint can. "You comfy?"

Ruby leaned back in the chair a bit and looked into the woman's eyes, sifting through her thoughts until she found what she was looking for. "Gwen…Campbell, is that right? As in Mary Campbell?"

The woman's face paled. "How'd you know my name?"

"Demons can get into your head, Gwen," said the blond man, still focused entirely on Ruby.

 _Mark Campbell,_ Ruby thought. _Interesting._ "Is everybody here related?"

"None of your business," Gwen said, her fingers curling around the hilt of the knife in her belt-sheath.

"Actually, it kinda is. See, you kidnapped Sam and me, and I want to know why. So either you tell me, or I find out anyway."

"Dean says that's not Sam," Mark said, meeting Ruby's eyes, steadily. Not as much fear in this one, but maybe he just wasn't as smart as Gwen.

"And Dean's never wrong?" Ruby scoffed. "I could tell you stories."

"Or you could shut it," Mark said.

"Or you could get some vocabulary lessons." She crossed her ankles and leaned back further, until the chair tilted back onto its rear legs. She rocked back and forth a few times, tapping the front legs against the floor as loudly as she could.

Even through the devil's trap she felt the subtle shift in the air—the unmistakable, absolute zero of an angel's grace. Castiel was close. She could see the edges of his light from rooms away, brighter than she remembered, but still nowhere near as blinding as Lucifer.

Gwen and Mark hadn't noticed a damn thing. They stood there in silence for minutes that felt like hours.

"You're not gonna ask me any questions? Just gonna stand there and stare? That's lame."

Gwen's brow furrowed like she was considering it. She looked flustered for a second, then met Ruby's eyes again. "I thought Sam was dead."

"He's not."

"So if that's Sam…" Gwen shook her head in confusion. "…then why isn't Dean happy to see him? Sam's all he talks about. He misses him, you can tell."

Ruby considered her words carefully. "Dean doesn't think Sam's himself."

"Is he?" Mark asked.

"If you ask me, he's more himself than he ever was."

There was a sound from outside the door, from far down the hall—somebody yelling, a door slamming.

"One…two…three…" Ruby counted.

The door flew open and Dean walked inside.

Gwen and Mark both turned to him, like they they were awaiting instructions.

"Five minutes," Dean said, his voice low.

Gwen scoffed. "We're not leaving you alone in here. She's—"

"I know what she is," Dean pulled the knife—Ruby's knife—out from his hip-sheath. "I know who she is, and we need to have a nice private chat. Don't we, Ruby?"

Ruby smiled sweetly, eyeing her knife. "Aww...you even saved my stuff. What a prince."

Mark threw Gwen a look, and they stepped out of the room.

Dean walked across the floor until he was standing right in front of her chair, his feet less than an inch from the tips of her boots. He smiled down at her for a few seconds. The coldness and sheer hatred in his eyes would probably have scared most people. Then again, she wasn't people. "How'd you do it?" he asked.

"Do what?"

"You know what. How'd you get Sam out of the cage without his soul?"

"Is that what Castiel told you?" she asked. "Weird. That might be the first time a demon and an angel came to the same conclusion."

"You gonna tell me, or do I have to get creative?"

She shrugged. "All I did was stop his fall."

"Yeah? How? You were dead. I ran you through." He held up her knife. "With this— which last time I checked, kills demons dead. Or let me guess— you lied about being a regular demon, too."

"You killed me. You ran me through, with my own knife, right after Sam freed Lucifer. I died." She bit her lip, trying to decide how much to tell him. "But Lucifer brought me back."

Dean's face twisted in fury. "Little reward for being his number one bitch?"

"Something like that."

"Yeah? And then what— you just hung around for a year with your thumb up your ass while Sam and I fought with the angels and Crowley and the friggin' Horsemen of the Apocalypse?"

"You almost sound pissed that I didn't help you. Thought you wanted me dead," Ruby said, meeting Dean's eyes. "Make up your mind."

Quick as a human could move, Dean was on her, enchanted blade pressed right into her throat. He pushed forward, just enough to draw a few drops of blood. "I want you to stay dead."

 

"We all have a problem with that part, don't we Dean?" She smirked. "I mean between you, me and Sam...we should start a club."

Dean made a noise back deep in his throat. Not quite a growl, but angry enough to feel like one. "What do you want with Sam? What did you _do_ to him? And so help me if you say 'nothing,' I will push this all the way through your scrawny little neck."

Well then. She took a breath and answered quietly. "Blame me all you want, but I only want what's best for him."

The blade pushed deeper into her skin and she felt a trickle of blood run down the left side of her neck, pooling in her collarbone. Dean leaned closer, his breath hot against the side of her face. "You are _poison_. You are the first thing that has ever come between us, and I'm not gonna let that happen again. So, before I cut through your vocal chords, I'm gonna ask you one last time: _What_ did you do to him?"

"I stopped him from falling. Literally. He was falling into the cage and—"

"You weren't anywhere near Stull! I was there. I was right there until the last damn second, not you. You were dead."

"I wasn't in Stull, Dean. I was in Hell. Right above the cage. The first thing I saw after 120 years of solitary was Sam falling towards me. I grabbed him, I pulled us to safety, and here we are."

"No. That's not Sam. Maybe you grabbed his body, maybe you're keeping it going somehow, but that is not Sam. His soul is still down there, isn't it?" Dean looked exhausted with the last question, the anger in him wilting in the face of the truth.

As much as she liked to tease Dean when he was pissing her off, he was actually damn perceptive when it came to All Things Sam. "Did you really think he'd be able to throw Lucifer back in the cage without paying a price?"

"You've got five more seconds to tell me what you know." Dean pulled the knife back away from her throat and brought the blood-stained tip to the palm of his other hand. "Or I'll see if I can make death stick this time. I doubt Lucifer can bring you back again when he's locked up tight."

Ruby considered that for a moment. Dean would kill her without hesitation once he decided he was done with her. Sam wouldn't care if she died. Well, he'd be annoyed at the loss of his conveniently self-replenishing blood supply. Maybe. The worst part was that Dean was right. Lucifer couldn't bring her back. Even His power couldn't help her from within the cage.

"Sam's here and Sam's in the cage with Lucifer," she said, finally. Even if Dean knew the truth, it wasn't like he could do anything about it. No angel was strong enough or stupid enough to try to break into Lucifer's cage, and just trying to get Sam out would risk releasing Lucifer. "He split in two."

"Excuse you?"

"He split. In two. I caught Sam when he fell, but Lucifer was holding onto Sam's soul."

"So Sam's still in Hell? In the cage?" Dean's jaw twitched, and he swallowed, trying to bury his sorrow behind his anger.

"And…he's _here_. Not the Sam you grew up with maybe, but this is him, too. I know Sam, I know what—" Her hand flew up just in time to grab Dean's wrist and keep the blade from plunging into her throat.

"You don't know him," Dean growled out as she pushed him back, using her demonic strength. He staggered back, foot sliding across the still wet border of the devil's trap. The outer ring smudged and Ruby could feel the prickly energy of the circle disappear.

Using the raw power of her mind, Ruby slammed Dean against the wall, hard enough that he dropped her knife. She crossed the room and crouched down to pick it up. Her fingers closed around the familiar handle and she smiled as she brought its tip right to Dean's belly. "I missed this knife. You know what I had to do to get this made?"

"Something horrible, hopefully."

"Only one other person ever had the balls to take it from me before you. Want to guess who?"

The door slammed open and Gwen stuck her head in. "Dean, he--" She caught sight of Ruby and where her knife was and rushed towards her.

Ruby dodged Gwen's attack, moving away from Dean towards the center of the room, the familiar weight of the magical dagger in her hand making her eager for more bloodshed. Gwen looked like she could handle herself, but it wasn't exactly a fair fight.

"How's Sam?" Ruby asked, as she lunged towards Gwen's side, wrapping her arm quickly around the other woman's neck.

"Little thirsty," Sam said from the door. He looked from Gwen and Ruby to where Dean was pinned against the wall and scoffed. "I thought I was in the fun room." His lip bled when he smiled, and his right eye looked noticeably swollen.

"Samuel!" Dean yelled out, pulling against Ruby's invisible hold hard enough to lift his arm an inch from the wall. "Christian!"

"You okay?" Ruby asked Sam, while Gwen twisted against her hold.

"Fine." Sam's eyes fell on Ruby's neck, still streaked with blood. _Let my brother go._

Dean dropped from the wall and landed on the floor like only someone who'd had a lot of practice with being telekinetically pinned could have.

Sam tore his eyes away from Ruby's bleeding throat and turned to Dean, closing the distance between them in three long-legged strides. "Our grandfather's got a hell of a right hook."

Dean looked up at Sam's eye and a flash of worry crossed his face. Ruby could see him reminding himself that he wasn't looking at Sam as his lips curved back into that pissy little smirk he had when he was trying to hide his other emotions. "So does Christian."

"Christian," Sam said, nodding. "He's a relative too, right?"

"Cousin. Like Gwen." Dean's eyes flicked over to her. "Let her go, Ruby."

"Huh," Sam looked over his shoulder at Ruby, who shrugged and let go of Gwen.

Gwen stood still for a moment and then ran out of the door, probably to go check on the others.

Sam watched her leave, and turned back to Dean. "Didn't know we let our cousins get possessed."

"What?" Dean's brow furrowed and he looked at the door. "You mean Gwen?"

"No. Christian." Sam said, running his thumb over the cut in his lip.

"Christian's just a dick sometimes," Dean snapped. "Doesn't mean he's possessed."

"Not anymore. I took care of it." Sam cocked his head to the side, studying Dean. "You're serious, you didn't know?"

The tips of Dean's ears turned pink with anger, but he said nothing, just clenched his left fist while glaring at Ruby.

"Have you ever seen him cross a devil's trap?" Ruby asked. "You know, I was wondering why the wards you had on your thresholds here were so shitty, especially with this many hunters under one roof, but now it all makes sense." She had a thought then, but it was nearly too ludicrous to voice. "Castiel was here..."

Sam nodded. "Have to say that was the first time I've ever had an angel stick his hand into me without permission."

Ruby snorted.

Sam turned back to Dean. "But he found what he was looking for, didn't he?"

"No, what he _didn't_ find was your soul. Which means you don't have one, which means my brother is still in Hell. So why am I still talking to you?" Dean said, his voice starting to shift from anger to resignation.

"Because I'm him, too. Whether you like it or not." Sam said simply.

"You're nothing like him," Dean said. He turned and started to head for the door.

"That's it? you're just gonna let me go?" Sam asked. He sounded genuinely surprised.

"You're working with a demon," Dean said, his back still turned to them.

"So were you," Ruby said, watching Dean leave the room.

 _He still is, he just doesn't know it,_ Sam told her as they followed him out the door and stopped to look left and right, trying to find the closest exit. _I took out the demon that was possessing Christian, but I squeezed him a little first._

 _Anything good ?_ Ruby led the way down the hall to the left, listening for the voices of the remaining hunters. From the sound of it, they'd all gathered together in one of the bigger rooms now far behind them.

_I made him show me where they took the alpha vamp._

_You saw where?_ Ruby grinned at him. _The exact location?_

_Evergreen, Montana. They've been bringing all kinds of monsters there. At least a dozen have been alphas._

"Damn," Ruby said as they stepped outside. " Nicely done. Don't suppose you got him to tell you who's on the receiving end? Whose orchestrating all this?"

Sam smirked at her. "You get three guesses."

*******

"Crowley?" the trapped demon said, incredulously.

"You got wax in your ears, Meg?" Ruby asked, locking eyes with the demon across from her. "Thought you were one of the smarter ones."

"Well, compared to you two...that's not hard," Meg said, rolling her eyes.

"What makes you think I want to go anywhere near him?" Meg asked, her eyes shifting nervously to Sam. "I'm high enough on his hit-list already."

"Why?" Sam asked. "For trying to kill my brother and me? For killing Ellen & Jo?"

"For serving Lucifer, genius," Meg snapped. "Crowley's not a big fan of us loyalists."

Sam laughed.

"What's so funny?" Meg's eyes narrowed. "And what the hell's going on with you anyway? Where _is_ your brother. He just let you run off with this bitch?"

"Watch it, sister," Ruby said, her voice tinged with amusement.

"I'm not your sister. Bitch." Meg said, smiling through her teeth. "How'd you get back on the marble anyway? Thought Dean killed you."

"He did. Lucifer brought me back," Ruby said.

Meg paled, just a little, and her mouth pursed. "Is that a fact?"

"Lucifer wants me by Sam's side, wants me to make sure I keep him on the right path until he's free again. So…help us. Help us take down Crowley. Help us take the usurper off the throne."

Meg swallowed, her mask of ambivalence starting to crack. "How are you going to break the seals again? Lilith is dead."

Ruby had been wondering the same thing for weeks now. "There's always a way." She thought about how strong Sam had gotten last time around, when his morals were still clashing with his powers every step of the way, thought about how easily he was wielding them now, and about how she barely had to talk him into stepping up his game. "If we can't unlock the door, we'll just have to blast it open."

Meg cocked an eyebrow. "How are we gonna do that?

" _We_ aren't doing anything," Sam said, taking a few steps closer. "I know you, what you are, how you turn two-timing into a sport."

"Really? You're gonna lecture me? And Ruby's what—mother Teresa?" Meg scoffed.

"Ruby's loyal. She did everything she had to do to free her god, and that's exactly what she's doing now." Sam glanced at Ruby and nodded. "She does whatever she has to to reach her goal. I can respect that."

If she hadn't had weeks of acclimation behind her, Ruby would have choked on her own spit. Having Sam by her side again was one thing, but to hear him support her out loud was another.

"Of course, there's no way I'll let Lucifer in again, and if it comes down to it, I'll kill Ruby to keep that from happening," Sam added.

That was more like what she'd expected. "Thanks."

"But you're okay with us setting him free again?" Meg asked incredulously.

"I don't like Crowley." Sam smirked. "I want to know why he's been collecting monsters, and then I want him gone."

"And then?" Meg asked.

"Then you can do whatever you want with Hell," Sam said, meeting Meg's eyes.

*******


	3. Chapter 3

 

"You have a legitimate— well as legitimate as things get in Hell claim to the throne, and you don't want it?" Meg asked Sam for what felt like the tenth time.

Ruby chuckled to herself as she followed Meg and Sam to the prison. "You having trouble hearing today?"

"No. Your boy-wonder's being an idiot." She grabbed Sam by the elbow, pulling him back a step. "I get that something in your gourd cracked. You're not as much of a wuss as you used to be."

Sam smirked.

"But ruling Hell would give you several tons of leverage and you--"

"I'm not. Interested," Sam said, his eyes darkening. "And why do you care so much? Take the throne yourself if it's that awesome."

"Taking the throne's easy," Meg said bitterly. "Keeping it is the hard part."

"And you think I'd have no problem keeping it? As a human?" Sam arched his eyebrows skeptically.

"You're not exactly human, Sam," Meg said. "Don't be dense."

"Hell always does better with a Queen anyway," Ruby said. "Lilith got everybody nice and motivated."

Meg laughed. "Lilith ordered us all to kill you."

"Yeah and you never tried. Not even once," Ruby mused. "Why is that?"

"Because I knew what Sam could do, how strong he'd get." Meg looked up at him warily. "I've been around a lot longer than you, you know," she said, turning to Ruby. "Azazel made me. My father might not have told me everything, but I knew enough to put two and two together. He loved Lucifer. As much as Lilith, maybe more. You have any idea how pissed he was at me for taking a joyride in Lucifer's Ferrari?" She looked at Sam, who glared back at her with a distinct look of 'I'm not a car.'

"But you didn't say anything. You spent that whole year, all those centuries down below, hiding," Ruby said.

Meg looked at Sam. "Not a fan of being food." She flicked her eyes back to Ruby. "Unlike you."

Sam snorted. "She's more than food, you know."

"Is that right?" Meg asked, raising her chin, amusement coloring her voice.

"Yeah she's a damn good lay, too." Sam winked at Ruby, who didn't know whether to smack him or kick him in the nuts.

"How romantic," Meg muttered, crouching down behind the low wall they'd come to. Sam kneeled down next to her and Ruby flanked Meg's other side.

They were outside of the rear entrance to the large abandoned prison Crowley had been using as a home base for whatever monster-abducting scheme he was running. Ruby narrowed her eyes and surveyed the building. The windows were barred and mostly blackened by dirt or paint or both, but even with the little she could see, she knew they'd found it. Things that looked mostly human but weren't were pacing back and forth, clawing at the windows, rocking on their beds, and howling. It was Crowley's own monster-zoo. But why did he have one? What was he doing with them?

The answers became obvious as soon as they set foot inside the building. There were loud and inhuman screams echoing through the walls of the building. This section of the ground floor was completely empty, but they walked slowly anyway watching for any movement. Ruby tilted her head as she listened to the screaming above them.

"Shifter," Sam said as he looked up towards the direction of the sound. "It's the same thing, using different voices."

"We've got company," Meg said, nodding up towards a stairwell ahead of them.

For a moment, Ruby couldn't see anything. But she felt it. A tremor in the air, the heat and smell of hellfire. Then she saw them.

A low growl came from the top of the stairs, and Sam's eyes widened as he brought his hand up, palm out.

"Hellhounds," Ruby said.

The large hounds leapt down the stairs, one at Sam, one at Meg. The air shuddered as the hellhound on the left opened its maw and lunged for Sam's throat. Ruby threw herself forward, not sure if Sam could even see the beast. She crashed into its flank, but it kept going, shrugging her off like she'd never been there at all.

Ruby landed heavily, her chin colliding with the stone floor. It took her a few seconds to knit the bones in her jaw back together, and a few more to get her vision working again. Meg yelled out behind her, struggling with the other hound, and Ruby looked over to Sam in a panic.

The hound was on top of him, snarling, its red eyes glaring down. Sam's left hand was on the hound's throat and his right was pressed against its chest. His eyes were closed in concentration and Ruby nearly screamed at him right then to never close his eyes during a fight.

There was a flash of light from the center of the hound, followed by another and another until it was lit up inside, golden light streaming out through its skin, its eyes and its mouth.

 

Sam was looking straight at the hellhound, and he was smiling. His power peaked and then collapsed in on itself, taking the hellhound's life with it. The empty shell of the beast collapsed on top of him. He pushed it off with a grunt, then stood, looking past Ruby to Meg.

"Thanks for the help," Meg said, her face splattered with black. The hound lay at her feet, panting but otherwise unmoving. She'd gutted it with a Bowie knife. Ruby's Bowie knife. That Ruby couldn't remember ever handing over.

"Is it dead?" Sam asked curiously. He walked up next to Ruby and looked at the still-growing puddle of hellhound ichor. "What'd you do to it?" he asked Meg.

"Sliced it open."

"Didn't think you could kill them just by cutting them open," Sam said.

"You can't." Meg shrugged. "But this'll keep him down for a few minutes. Long enough for us to get a move on." She followed Sam's gaze to the floor. "You can't see it, can you? You just killed one yourself…and you can't even see it." She scoffed, then turned her back on them and started heading up the stairs.

Ruby looked up at Sam. "How did you know where it was?"

"You taught me how. I could feel it. I knew where it was." Sam crouched down next to the black puddle, and reached out his hand until he was touching the hound.

Ruby watched, waiting for the electric crackle of Sam's power to snuff out the weakened attack dog.

Instead of lighting the hellhound up from the inside, Sam ran his hand over the large wound running up the hound's center and brought his fingers to his nose, sniffing curiously at the black ooze. Tentatively he stuck out his tongue and touched it to his pointer finger, tasting the hound's blood.

"Sam—" Ruby started to say, but then she stopped herself. She didn't actually know. She had no idea what hellhound blood would or wouldn't do to Sam. From the stench alone, she was sure it couldn't taste good, at any rate. Then again, blood was an acquired taste…and once acquired, rarely lost. Sam was no exception.

Sam didn't seem too affronted by the smell at any rate, and cleaned off his fingers quickly, one by one. "I can see it now," he said, as he brought his hand forward, reaching for more. "I've never seen anything like it. This doesn't even look like skin, it looks like—"

"Shadows. It's skin is made of shadows."

Sam brought his hand to his mouth again, this time cupped and holding a small pool of the blood which he drank down quickly. He reached for the hound again, and Ruby grabbed him by the wrist. "There's no time. We have to go before Crowley sends others."

The look Sam gave her was strange. First he was practically pouting, mad at being denied seconds, but then his eyes met hers and he stared, like he was seeing her for the first time. Maybe he was.

"How's it taste?" she asked, not ready to ask what it was he'd seen in her.

"Pure," Sam said, as he pulled free from her hold. He touched the hound's wound, closed his eyes and burned the demon-beast's soul as quickly as he had the other.

Ruby watched him as he walked closer, still looking at her strangely. "Can you…see me, too?"

Sam nodded.

Ruby swallowed and looked down, remembering what she'd seen the last time she'd caught sight of herself. Her real self. It wasn't easy to see your own reflection as a demon. Most mirrors and cameras couldn't even pick up the full spectrum of Hell's damage. She knew what Sam would see though. He'd see the truth: her real face, shaped by time, power, sorrow, anger, pride, and hatred for those that had wronged her—all etched into her skin—bone-deep scars that made her twisted and inhuman.

Two long fingers touched her chin as Sam tilted her head up to look at him. He pressed his body against hers, hard and insistent, and kissed her deeply, the taste of hellfire still strong enough to leave her breath smoke-filled after they pulled apart.

"You two coming some time today?" Meg called from above.

"Definitely," Sam said under his breath.

Stepping away from Sam, Ruby responded, _Yell a little louder, maybe they haven't heard us at the other end of the prison yet._

Sam stopped by the hound Meg had gutted one last time, running his hand through the puddle of blood. _They already heard us, plus Crowley's gonna be curious when his dogs don't come back._

 _Speaking of noise…_ Meg looked towards the door at the top of the stairs, and then up at the ceiling.

 _The shifter. He stopped screaming._ Ruby reached for the double doors in front of them and pushed them open.

Sam finished sucking the blood off his fingers, his teeth dark with hellhound blood. _He's dead._

She should really get him to start carrying gum around.

They walked down the hall, looking in each cell briefly. Werewolves, vampires, rougarous, arachnids—all of them were caged like beasts, shackled to the walls or in some cases to their beds.

Sam stopped next to a vampire's cell first and stared at him, silently until the vampire lost its nerve. He was young, both in body and age. He didn't smell quite newly made, he'd already fed on humans, but he was still far too frightened to be more than a few decades old, at most.

"What do you want?" he asked.

"Just an answer to a question?" Sam said.

"What question?"

"Where's your father?" Sam asked.

Ruby crossed her arms and stood behind Sam, waiting. She could hear Meg moving further down the hall, her knife held out, skimming across the metal bars.

"My father?" the vampire swallowed. "I killed him, after I—"

"Your _new_ father. The one that speaks right into your frontal lobe," Sam wrapped his long fingers around the bars of the vampire's cell. "Tell me where he is."

"No, I—"

Sam clutched the bar tighter and the air started to smell like electrical fire. Ruby watched the vampire's fangs come out in reflex as Sam's power squeezed him by the throat and pulled him closer, until he was just inches away, separated only by the iron bars.

"Show me. I know you see him."

Ruby listened in on Sam's thoughts carefully as the vampire's eyes widened and his mind cracked open. Flashes of memories sped by, one frame at a time—a house, three large pine trees, a long curving driveway, and the number "48" written in gold lettering. Not enough to pinpoint a location, but then, that wasn't the point. One more memory flickered in and out of the vampire's mind, recent and stronger than all the others: the face of the alpha vampire—powerful, ancient, deadly—and very much alive.

"See? That wasn't so hard, was it?" Sam said, as he let the vampire's mind go. "Just one more thing." He slipped his hand quickly through the bars and grabbed onto the vampire's wrist. _How much do you need?_ Sam asked Ruby.

"To track the alpha again?" Ruby pulled out her knife and ran it over the vampire's wrist. "With those memories fresh in his mind, just a few drops from this one'll do." She swiped her finger over the wound and pulled a small piece of cloth from her pocket.

"Find him. Now," Sam said, his thrill for the hunt a tangible thing.

"Crowley, remember?" Ruby said, and started back down the hall after Meg.

"Please, help me. You have to help me," said a voice from one of the cells as they passed by. Ruby took a step back and peered into the dimly lit cell. There was a woman inside, chained to the worn cot next to her. She looked terrified and her eyes were red from crying. "You gotta get me out of here, please!" she said again, as she walked towards them. She didn't get far, the chains holding her tight feet away from the barred door.

Sam tilted his head looking at her arm. "That's a hell of a tattoo."

The woman ran her hand over the tattoo running down her other arm and the design shifted, retracting, like it was fading into her skin.

"Djinn," Meg said, "you're a djinn, right?"

"We killed a djinn once," Sam said as he stepped closer to the bars. "Older, bald guy. Had tattoos like yours, but way more. Face and everything. His eyes were blue."

"That was my father," the woman said, her voice shaky. "You killed him! You and your brother." She lunged forward again, but the chains pulled her back, and she fell to the floor, looking up at Sam miserably. "We got your brother—"

"Dean's alive," Sam said, crouching down so he could meet the Djinn's eyes. "You failed."

The woman nodded miserably, her black curly hair framing her face. "Those hunters caught us, brought us here. To _him_."

"To who? Crowley?" Meg asked.

The djinn's eyes widened. "Don't say his name. He'll hear you."

Meg scoffed. "Honey, he already knows we're here. I'm starting to think that's the whole point. Isn't it, Ruby?" Meg asked turning to her. "Not really sure you two told me the whole plan."

"We didn't," Ruby said, and left it at that.

Meg glared at her and stared at the back of Sam's head. "How about you, Sammy? Gonna fill me in on what we're doing here chit-chatting with the inmates?"

Sam didn't move, or speak, he just narrowed his eyes and Meg began choking. She clutched at her throat and her eyes flipped to black as Sam squeezed her soul just enough to make it hurt before letting go of her again.

Ruby watched, unsurprised as Meg's face turned furious.

"Fine. But at least hurry it up, " Meg snapped.

"Tell me why Crowley's so interested in you," Sam said to the djinn, his voice thick with power, just the way Ruby had taught him.

He wouldn't have an easy time overpowering a djinn though. Demons, the weakest ones, were the easiest for Sam to command, because that's what he'd been built to do. Humans were even easier to sway then demons, but the woman in the cell was neither.

Sam kept watching the djinn who had fallen silent. The tattoo on her arm had started to shift and grow, crawling down her arm in a beautifully intricate pattern until it reached her fingertips. Her eyes were focused on Sam's, unblinking, and her face had become completely expressionless.

"You're not trying to read her mind, are you?" Ruby asked, confused. Human minds were easy to peek in on, once you got the hang of it, but djinn were a whole different species. Their minds were generally immune to being manipulated—a handy side-effect of their anatomy.

"I was…" Sam said, keeping his focus on the woman in front of him. "…but I can't get in, so I started squeezing her heart instead. Figured she had to have one."

"Clever boy," Meg said. "That's what controls their toxin flow."

"Mmm…" Sam reached his hand out and closed his fingers into a fist quickly. As he did, three feet away from him, the chain holding the djinn snapped. He pulled his hand in towards himself and the woman slid forward, until she was pressed up against the bars. She was conscious, but unable to move, held in place by Sam's power.

Sam slid his slim fingers through the bars until he was touching the djinn's shoulder, right above her tattoo.

"Sam!" Ruby said, alarmed. "You're not immune to her, don't be stupid."

"I want to see what she has to show me," Sam said. "This is the quickest way."

Meg snorted from behind him. "Have fun with that."

Sam ran his fingertip carefully over the highest curve of the djinn's tattoo and took a deep breath as he closed his eyes.

Ruby put her hand on Sam's shoulder, almost reflexively, and tried to monitor his thoughts, careful not to let herself get swept up by the djinn's illusion. Demons were immune to monster venom, but djinns were absolute masters of thought manipulation. She could feel the moment the toxin entered Sam's system, not just in the tightening of his back muscles, but in the way his mind relaxed. A soft blue light bled into his thoughts and started to form pictures as the veins on his face turned dark.

Flashes of light so intense it could only be one thing—grace, pure and terrible; Ruby's hand as it grabbed Sam's own; the smell of air, of food, of blood—the taste of it on his tongue, metallic, bitter with sulfur and sweet with power. Sam's memories—his happiest memories. This Sam didn't have any other desires, or regrets, and the djinn's magic stuttered, trying to find something more potent it could use. Finally it found an image of Dean and held on to it.

Dean faced Sam and there was no trace of affection in his eyes. "You're not my brother. You're not even human." He raised a knife and brought it plunging straight down into Sam's heart. "You don't get to wear his skin"

Within the djinn's illusion, Sam was paralyzed. He couldn't fight back, he couldn't even move, he just watched as the blade pierced his flesh and then his heart.

"Dammit, Sam," Ruby muttered under her breath as his back started to arch, the djinn's poison convincing him he was dying. "I _told_ you."

A soft but pleased laugh came from behind her. "Still not the brightest bulb, huh?" Meg kneeled down next to Ruby. "I mean he's definitely the 60 watt to Dean's 20, but still…"

"Shut up, Meg," Ruby nodded towards the djinn, who was now wide-awake, and backing away from them. "We need the antidote."

"Which is…?" Meg held up her hands. "What— you think I have some on me?"

"Her blood," Ruby said. "Their blood carries the antitoxin."

"Of course it's the blood. When is it not the blood?" Meg muttered. She reached her hand out, and made a fist, mimicking Sam's gesture from earlier.

The djinn screamed as she was pulled back towards the bars. Meg brought her knife up to the woman's throat. "Stop, no— please. I'll tell you. I'll tell you what Crowley wants, okay? I'll tell you everything."

Meg flicked her eyes over to Ruby. _Well? Think your boy can last a few more seconds?_

Ruby nodded to Meg, while she tried her best to hold Sam still. He was strong. He'd make it. _Hurry._

Meg dug the very tip of the blade into the djinn's throat until a bright red bead welled up. "Speak."

"He wants Purgatory. It's all he talks about."

"Purgatory?" Meg repeated, eyebrows quirked.

"He wants to know how to open a door," the djinn sniffed, her breath shaky.

"Why?" Ruby asked, feeling Sam's pulse. It was going fast—too fast, but his body was used to running past human norms, he'd hold out a little longer.

"I don't know why," said the woman, clutching one of the bars in front of her. "Let me out, please. I can't stay here. He'll kill me. He's killed so many already."

Meg pushed the knife tip in another millimeter. "What did he ask you, exactly?"

"I _told_ you!" the djinn said, her eyes widening again. "He asked me how to open a door to Purgatory, asked me how to get there. I told him I don't know. None of us know. We only go there when we die. That's all I know." She took another breath and met Ruby's eyes. "I swear that's all I know."

"Thank you for your cooperation," Meg said, and started to pull the knife further across the djinn's throat.

"Stop," Ruby grabbed Meg's wrist. "Take it from her arm. You don't need to kill her."

"When has that ever stopped me before?" Meg asked, confused.

"How are you going to get her head through the bars, genius? Cut low down by her wrist, not enough for her to bleed out. Sam only needs a little."

"Whatever," Meg shook her head, irritated and did as Ruby asked, guiding the djinn's hand through the bars and as close to Sam's head as she could.

Ruby tilted his head, angling his mouth towards the djinn's bleeding wrist, and forced his jaw open.

For a few seconds, Sam didn't respond, his eyes still rolled back into his head as the djinn's illusions ran through his mind. The moment the blood hit his system, his breathing slowed and his mouth closed around the djinn's wrist, taking in more of her blood, like it was something familiar.

"That's enough," Ruby said, pulling the djinn's arm gently away. "You just needed a few drops as an antidote. More won't do you any good."

Sam wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. "You sure about that?"

She was sure. Mostly. Monster blood wouldn't give him a boost the way demon blood did—in theory it wouldn't do anything to him. Most humans risked being changed if they ingested vampire blood, or werewolf blood, or a myriad of other things, but thanks to Azazel's blood, Sam had been immunized against anything that would make him unsuitable as Lucifer's vessel. Unfortunately that immunity didn't include the djinn's neurotoxin.

Sam was watching the djinn nurse her bleeding wrist. "How did you do that? Get into my head, even though I was blocking you out?" he asked. "I'm stronger than you." He sounded steady as always, but something had shifted in his eyes. What the djinn showed him had rattled him.

 _You can't block her,_ Ruby told him.

"Doesn't matter," the woman said, as her tattoo faded slowly back into her skin. "That's the thing most people...and demons don't get. They think we're magic and assume we're subject to its laws. "We're more than that." She turned her wrist towards them. The skin was completely healed. "We're just another part of nature. We're not strong like the wolves or the bears, but we can defend ourselves against them. Against anyone."

"Fascinating, can we go now?" Meg asked, standing.

"Yeah." Ruby took one last look at the djinn and felt like apologizing, but didn't. "We've got all we need."

 _We're sure she was telling the truth?_ Meg asked. _Or are you scared Sam's gonna lick another toad?_

Sam laughed as he pushed himself back to his feet. "She was telling the truth."

"Well then, let's go find Oz, the great and powerful," Meg said.

They walked further down the hall, past one occupied cell after another. This floor was full to capacity, but much to Sam's dismay, there was no trace of the alpha vamp or any other alpha.

"Why is he keeping them alive this long?" Sam asked as they walked into a larger room, one that looked like it had been repurposed to function as an operating room…or a torture chamber.

Ruby recognized several of the instruments on display: bone saws, valve clamps, scalpels, everything silver and sharp. Most demons, Alistair included, insisted that torture could only be a true art down below because you could cut directly into the soul, but she disagreed. If you were linked to your body tightly enough, torture above-ground could be just as bad, and just as effective. It all had to do with the skill of the one holding the blade.

"Why not just kill them, if they don't know the answer?" Sam asked again, this time looking at Ruby.

"Because you get more information out of people when they're terrified, and the best way to do that is to show them what happens if they don't cooperate. You kill them, they're out of the picture, but you keep them alive. Break them slow. You'll get what you need." Ruby swallowed bitterly as she remembered.

 

_Humans were cruel. She'd known that, on some basic level all her life—even as a girl. But it wasn't until she became a witch that she got to experience the worst of it first-hand. Fear made people do all kinds of horrible things. Fear mixed with religious fervor made them do those horrible things with conviction._

_The first time they tried her as a witch, she was still living near her childhood home. It was after they'd burned her house, after they'd burned her father. After she'd killed Mr. Henry. She stumbled into town, her hair covered in soot, her dress charred and when others, who'd seen what she'd done to Mr. Henry, grabbed her by the arms and dragged her to the courthouse, she hadn't even put up a fight. She was too tired, too heavy with sorrow to stop them._

_They tied her arms behind her and blindfolded her, questioning her about what she did, and how. She ignored them, and didn't say a word._

_She stayed completely quiet until they put her on a burning hot iron stool. Then she screamed._

_By the time they'd finished with her, she was covered in blisters and burns. Her blindfold had slipped and she could see the skin of her leg, red and black. The pain was excruciating, but she'd passed the point of caring and found a strange sort of calm inside of herself. They pushed her onto the floor and told her to confess her sins yet again, even though she'd already confessed to everything they'd accused her of—true or not. The voices of those around her faded away, and she heard the demon's voice in her instead, saying 'Why not ask them their sins?'_

_And so she did. She stood, and turned to each of them and asked them, her voice lower and louder than it should have been. They all confessed, one by one to the worst thing they'd ever done. They looked at each other in horror and disgust, unable to stop themselves._

_She waited for them to strike her again, or spit on her, or cut out her tongue (that would have been the smart thing to do), but instead they started to leave one by one._

_After an hour of sitting on the cold stone floor by herself, her legs started to heal, slowly. One of the demon's first gifts to her was resilience. She could still be hurt like any human, but given just a little time, she'd recover from nearly anything. The pain was worse as her wounds healed. With nothing more than a look, Ruby picked up the metal stool and threw it against the back wall forcefully enough to crack the wood._

_She limped to the door, out of the courthouse and out of the town. No one said a single word as she left._

 

"Well, well. The messiah and his two whores." Crowley appeared behind the surgery table, and picked up a scalpel. "Sorry, if I'd known you were coming I would have made dinner."

Next to her, Ruby could feel Sam tensing. His shoulders rolled back, his chest expanded and his power prickled beneath his skin, ready to strike.

She wanted to stay optimistic, she did, but Crowley was a snake—he always had been. They had to be careful.

"What are you doing, Crowley?" Sam asked. "What's with the monster collection?"

Crowley gave him a look and shrugged. "Always wanted a petting zoo. Tricky upkeep though. You have any idea how much meat a rougarou goes through in a day?" He clucked his tongue. "Messy too. Always have to hose down the whole hall when it's done. He turned to Meg. "So, what horrible fate befell you that made joining up with these two chuckleheads seem like a good idea?"

Meg took a step closer to Crowley and smirked. "We have similar goals." She raised her hand and brought her fingers into a fist.

Crowley doubled over in pain, gasping.

Releasing her hold on Crowley, Meg threw a look to Sam. _You ready?_

Sam nodded, but Ruby could feel the tension underneath. Killing the hellhounds had taken a lot out of him. He could help them take Crowley down, probably even kill him, but if others showed up, and they would, his concentration was going to be split. He'd had a gallon of demon blood from the back-up supply, so his power should have been through the roof, but she had felt it dip after the first hellhound kill, and again after the second, spiking just a little when he drank from the second hound.

"What do you want?" Crowley asked, eyes shifting nervously from Meg to Sam to Ruby.

"A few things," Ruby said. "First, tell us why you're looking for Purgatory."

"Pass," Crowley said, angrily. "Next?"

Meg squeezed her hand shut again and Crowley winced in pain.

"Ow! Would you stop that?" he yelled, as the air behind him shimmered and four demons appeared.

Ruby could feel Sam grinning next to her.

"Oh bloody hell," Crowley muttered. Turning to his guards, he added. "Did I or did I not specifically tell you to wait for me to call you?"

"Sir," the demon furthest to the right said, "you said 'wait for me to call you unless it sounds like I'm dying.'"

Crowley's eyes rolled up towards the ceiling and the tips of his ears tinged red. "Clearly you've forgotten what dying sounds like. If you survive this, which you probably won't, I'll give you a refresher."

Clearly done waiting, Sam reached out with his mind and grabbed hold of the demon nearest to him, pulling it through the air until it landed in a heap by his feet. He reached down and grabbed the demon by the collar, as he pulled out his knife.

"Now, now," Crowley said, wagging his finger at Sam, "none of that." He tilted his head to the side. "Business first, drinks later."

His expression shocked, Sam froze where he stood.

 _Sam, what the hell?_ Ruby asked, confused at why he was cooperating, until she realized he wasn't. Sam wanted to tear the demon's throat open, but Crowley had overridden him.

 _This isn't happening,_ Meg added to Ruby's thoughts. _Crowley's not even close to the same league as Azazel or Lilith, no way he can override Sam._

"Heel, boy," Crowley said, smiling beatifically at Sam.

Sam fell to his knees, his face twisted in fury.

"Hellhound blood. Nasty stuff, but it's got a hell of a kick for you, am I right?" Crowley asked.

The demon next to Sam grabbed Sam's knife and held it to his throat. Ruby flung her own will at the demon, slamming him into the nearest wall.

Crowley chuckled. "Hellhounds are wonderful creatures. Multi-dimensional manifestors, apex soul grabbers and magnificently loyal. Their blood is a part of them. It holds their intellect, their sight, their power...and what else? Oh right, their complete inability to disobey a command from their king."

Meg's lips twitched. "You have no right to the throne."

"Maybe not, but I took it, and that's all they care about." Crowley raised his eyebrows and smirked, pleased with himself. "And until you burn through those drops you swallowed, Sam, you're part of the pack." Crowley shifted his view to Ruby and Meg, grinning. "So…kill them."

"Sam, wait—" Ruby said as he stood and stretched his arm out towards them, his power coiling in his fingertips. "Come on, you're stronger than this."

His power collided with Meg first, knocking her straight back against the wall behind them. Plaster crumbs rained down as Meg ran her tongue over the cut on her lip. She'd bitten down hard.

"Sam!" Ruby yelled as she watched him stalk towards Meg. Then she found herself pinned on the opposite side of the room, watching as Sam lowered his mouth over Meg's neck and bit down.

Meg pushed against Sam as he drank, fighting against his hold with all she could muster. "Stop!" she yelled.

Empowered by the new influx of blood as he was, Sam's strength was far greater than Meg's and he pulled her off the wall, holding her tight as he drained her.

 _Stop,_ Ruby told him, speaking right into his thoughts. _We need her for this._

His only reaction was a low growl as he finished drinking the last drops from Meg's veins and let go of her, dropping her to the ground. Meg glared up at him, her throat frayed where Sam had bitten through.

"Well," Crowley said, with raised eyebrows, as Sam turned back to face him. "Put me down as scared _and_ horny. Now kill the other one."

Sam turned to face Ruby and found Meg standing directly in front of him. She waved, smiled, and then kneed him in the groin. For all his strength, and all his power, Sam was still a man, and he sunk to the floor and curled in in himself, just like a man.

"Red card!" Crowley yelled to Meg, and gestured to his guards. "You're off the bench."

 _Now would be a really good time to snap out of it, Sam,_ Ruby thought, as two of the four demons started to run at her. She pulled out her knife ready to slice them wide open. Meg got ready to face the other two, swaying slightly where she stood from the blood loss. They might not need blood to inhabit human bodies, but it held a good chunk of their power.

Sam slowly rolled to his knees and pushed himself up—bleary eyes looking from Ruby to Meg. He reached his arm out towards them and Ruby felt the air tingle as he tried to grab hold of all four demons and stopped. He was fighting against Crowley's command, and losing, but he was _fighting_.

Crowley's attention snapped to Sam. "Need to take you back to obedience school, do I?" He raised his chin. "I said: kill them."

"Sam took a step forward and held his hand out again. This time his power roared to life, focused entirely on Ruby. She was pulled instantly, across the room, still white-knuckling her knife when Sam caught her in his left arm, pushed her head to the side with his right and bit down on her throat.

Her vision bloomed with stars as the pain and pleasure of Sam's bite overwhelmed her senses. His power held her absolutely still and all she could do was hope that the new influx of blood would help him snap out of it. Distantly she heard Meg fighting off the other demons, grunting as they attacked her.

_Blood is power over another._

_That was the demon's first lesson in spellwork, and the one she never, ever forgot._

_Blood is the conduit between the flesh and the spirit. Every drop contains a fragment of the soul. Take a drop of someone's blood and you hold a part of them. Burn their blood and you burn them. Swallow their blood and you become them._

 

Sam had taken so much of her blood Ruby could feel her body protesting. She felt weaker than she had in centuries, but she wasn't the least bit afraid. Sam wouldn't hurt her. He couldn't. She was inside of him, she flowed through him and she added her power to his, to Meg's, to the hounds, to every other drop he'd taken until his fire became a star, became a sun.

The room lit up flash-bang bright and she felt Sam release his hold on her. When she could see again, all four of Crowley's guards were dead. Meg stood in the middle of the ring of their bodies and let out a sharp exhale. "Thanks."

Soft applause sounded as Crowley clapped his hands together. "Very impressive. Like flushing out laudanum with scotch."

Sam's hand reached out towards Crowley and the hum of power started to rise again, but then cut off as an even brighter light formed around Crowley.

When Sam dropped his hand, Crowley was gone, and the whole room was silent except for the flutter of wings.

*******

"It was an angel," Sam said for the fourth time.

"No shit, Sherlock!" Meg said aggravated. "Whatever gave you that idea?" She plopped onto the ratty bedspread heavily and rubbed at her neck wound, which was nearly completely healed.

Sam's jaw twitched in annoyance. "What I mean is: Why is an _angel_ working with Crowley?" Sam looked to Ruby. "Or bailing him out? Are there other angels in Hell that aren't loyal to Lucifer?"

Meg scoffed. "All the angels that fell with Lucifer are already dead. Plus, the Fallen were demons—incredibly powerful demons, the lords of Hell, but they lost their grace when they fell. Lucifer…" She smirked. "…and Michael are the only two angels in Hell."

"Castiel," Ruby said, as a crazy thought entered her mind and solidified—fact after fact clicking together.

"Castiel?" Sam turned to look at her and within seconds his look of confusion turned into one of certainty. "You're right."

"It all makes sense—" Ruby stood up, pacing between the beds and the table. "He didn't care that the Campbells were working with a demon, he knows Crowley, he's fighting against the other angels in Heaven—"

"So he allies himself with Hell." Sam huffed. "I wonder if Dean knows."

Meg held up her hand and closed her eyes. "Wait, wait, whoa. The Campbells— as in Mary?"

"As in Christian, Mark, Gwen, and my grandfather Samuel." Sam said.

Meg's eyebrows shot up at the mention of Samuel.

"Dean's been working with them," Sam added.

"Your grandpa died. He was down in Hell last time I checked," Meg said.

"When was the last time you checked?" Ruby asked. "Can't be safe there for you since Lucifer got locked up again."

Meg rolled her eyes. "No wonder you and Sam get along so well. You're both geniuses. Really."

"Think Crowley sprung him?" Sam asked.

"Definitely," Ruby said. "The question is why?"

"Who cares. I'm way more interested in what Clarence is up to," Meg said. "He was two steps away from falling last time I saw him anyway. Maybe he finally took the plunge." Her lips curved on the last word and she smiled, showing a hint of teeth.

"Follow him," Sam said.

"What?" Meg and Ruby asked in unison. Ruby wondered if the hodge-podge of blood earlier had made Sam's occasionally questionable logic take a turn for the worse.

"Follow him. See what he's up to," Sam said.

"You want me to follow an _angel_?" Meg said. "I'm sorry, why am I risking my barely-healed neck for you? And what the hell makes you think I could follow him without him knowing I'm there?"

"He'll know you're there. Doesn't matter." Sam moved from his position in the center of the room and headed for his duffel bag.

"Right. Doesn't matter to you because if he kills me, you won't bat an eyelash," Meg sighed. "Where's my motivation exactly?"

"You still want to help us take down Crowley, right?" Ruby asked.

Meg stared at her silently, but her eyes held nothing but hatred for the king.

"This is how. We have to figure out what they're up to, and if I'm right…" Ruby turned to watch Sam as he pulled out a change of clothes from his bag. "...then Dean doesn't know what Castiel's up to either. Maybe you should go right to Dean."

Meg stood up and threw her hands out in front of her. "Why? So I can die ten times quicker?"

"Because Dean _has_ to know something's up. He's not stupid," Sam said.

Meg scoffed. "Could've fooled me."

"How many times has he kicked your ass?" Sam asked. "Oh, right."

"And yet, here I am," Meg said coldly.

"Tell Dean what we saw. Tell him everything." Sam turned towards the bathroom. "I'm gonna shower."

"Room for one more?" Meg asked. Then she turned to Ruby and winked. "Or two?"

Sam ignored her and closed the door behind him.

"Thought he'd be more fun like this," Meg said, folding her arms across her chest.

"He is," Ruby said. "But he still has taste."

"Nice."

"Go to Dean, find out what he's up to," Meg said.

"Dean? I thought I was spying on Castiel. Did I sign a contract to be your personal 007 when I wasn't looking, or something?"

"You know Dean's more of a threat than Castiel, he always is. He's not going to give up on Sam. He'll keep looking until he finds something or someone that can fix him." Even saying it out loud tasted bad on her tongue, but Ruby knew it was true. Dean never accepted "no" for an answer when it came to Sam. Never.

"Nobody can fix Sam," Meg said. "Nobody's strong enough to break the cage open."

"Except…" Ruby watched Meg, curious if she'd come to the same conclusion.

"No. No way he'd be stupid enough to try to summon him," Meg said.

"Remember who we're talking about," Ruby said, smirking.

"You know there was chatter about how it all went down." Meg tapped her finger against her chin. "Some people on the fringe say Death helped Dean lock Lucifer back up."

"Makes sense. Lucifer walking would throw off the 'natural order' a bit." Ruby cocked her head to the side, thinking. "You think he'd help Dean out again?"

"That'd suck," Meg said. "Okay, I'll go follow the brain-trust." Just before she vanished she said. "You'd better get in the shower before the water turns off."

*******

After their second shower, Ruby and Sam were both hungry.

Well Ruby wasn't, not really, but she wanted a break, even if it was just fifteen minutes and French fries. Sam had picked them up food from somewhere nearby, slightly more solid than fast food. Less than two bites into their meal, he asked, "Did you track him yet?"

Ruby nodded, her mouth full of potato and salt. She pointed at the map spread out on her bed.

Sam walked over to the map, still holding his sandwich. "Hoople, North Dakota. Hoople, really?"

"Sounds pretty creepy," Ruby said, licking the salt from her thumb. It prickled her tongue and she thought of the taste of Sam's skin after a kill. "You get your refill?

"Tracked down two demons on the way," Sam said in between bites, "Three gallons."

"Good, you gonna drink up before we go to the vamp?"

Sam looked at her, considering. "I've still got plenty of juice, could've taken down Crowley easy if the angel express hadn't snatched him." He finished off his sandwich. "Then again, it's the alpha. I still have no idea how strong he is."

"I've been thinking about this." Ruby played with her soda straw. "Wherever he's holed up, he's bound to be surrounded by his vampires, right? I mean at the rate they're going, they could've made him hundreds of personal guards."

Sam tilted his head to the side. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying as much fun as it is taking vampires apart with your brain, we need to be smart about this. Try to take down as many as we can the old fashioned way: machetes and fire."

*******

Machetes and fire got them through the first dozen vampires they found waiting outside the grounds of the alpha's manor. Sam was about to bring his blade down onto the thirteenth vampire's neck when it held up its hands and yelled. "Wait!" Sam stopped the blade a millimeter from the man's skin. "He wants to see you."

"Who does?" Ruby asked, stepping closer to them, her own machete still wet with blood. She flicked the blade, sending the blood down into the thick green grass.

"Our father." The vampire pointed over his shoulder towards the manor.

They followed the guard into the ornate, ostentatious house from one room to another until they reached a large dining hall, where they were asked to hand over their weapons by two other vampires. Tall ones, with their hair in buns.

"No way," Ruby said, clutching her machete handle.

"Fine," Sam said, holding out his blade handle first to the guard across from him. "Keep in mind, I can kill you with my brain."

The vampire across from him, a tall blonde woman, didn't seem the least bit impressed, and took his blade with a mild look of distaste in her face, like it offended her sensibilities.

There was a soft hush of wind in the back of the large room, a door swinging open and shut, and a man entered. Not a man—the alpha vampire. His dark brown eyes were far more ancient than they looked, and he had an air of power around him that made even Ruby shiver.

"Sam Winchester. Lovely to meet you. I have heard so much about you." He sat down at the head of the table and leaned into the high-backed chair. "Remarkable things."

Two guards crossed the room and took position on either side of the alpha, their eyes straight ahead.

Seconds later, Sam sat in a chair on the left, three seats down from the alpha, but close enough to look him in the eyes.

Ruby moved over to a seat opposite Sam, standing behind the chair with her back close to the wall. She still held her machete, and wasn't going to sit down in a roomful of fangs. The vampires flanking the alpha didn't spare her a glance.

Their mistake.

"Is it true that you have no soul?" the alpha asked, his gaze fixed on Sam.

Sam nodded, his lips slightly curved.

"How wonderful." The father vampire brought his hands together, long curved nails barely making a sound as their tips touched. "The soul is humanity's greatest weakness, if you ask me."

"Couldn't agree more," Sam said, his eyes scanning the room.

He thought he was being subtle, and to a human he might have been. His head was turned towards the alpha vampire, but his eyes were moving every which way, looking for exits, defensible locations, potential weaknesses in the guards. Ruby had known him long enough to spot it all immediately, but if she could see it, so could the alpha.

"Humans are capable of magnificent cruelty," the alpha said, turning to smile up at a human woman who had brought him a blood-filled crystal pitcher and matching glass.

She poured the blood into the glass and bowed her head towards him. A servant, maybe even a thrall.

The father vampire continued, "But their souls make everything murky. It must be so difficult trying to weigh right and wrong, guilt and conviction every moment of every day."

"I wouldn't know," Sam said, his eyes on the vampire's glass.

"No," the alpha chuckled. "And why should you care? You are, quite possibly, the first perfect human." He raised his glass towards Sam and took a deep drink—a toast.

 _No,_ Ruby told Sam, even though he hadn't asked. _Even though I'm 90% sure it wouldn't turn you, don't drink anything he offers you. At the very least, it'll give him sway over you, and at worst there'll be side-effects._

"I'm human. Doesn't that make me imperfect by definition?" Sam asked. "We're cattle to you."

"Hardly," the vampire said, as he placed his glass back down on the table. "We feed to survive, and some humans are just that: food. But some…" He smiled at Sam, showing a hint of teeth. "Some are so much more. Some of them, we take under our wing—help them climb another rung on the evolutionary ladder."

Sam smiled stiffly. "Is that why you wanted to see us? To give us a leg up?"

The alpha laughed, rich and deep. "Not both of you." He turned to look at Ruby, and his smile faded. "I can't do a thing with her."

"What a shame," Ruby said. She could see Sam's patience wearing thin. His fingers tapped the surface of the mahogany table in a steady rhythm.

"But you, Sam," the vampire continued. "If I were to give you my gift, you would be…complete. The perfect hunter." He picked up his empty glass and set it down right in front of him, at the edge of the table. He lifted his hands, and brought the long, sharp nail of his left thumb to his right wrist. A stream of red welled up, and he moved his wrist over the glass right before drops started to fall, catching every single one.

Ruby watched Sam watching the glass fill and chewed on her lip in annoyance. _Don't be stupid._

Sam ignored her, focused solely on the blood. Maybe he'd decided it was worth the risk. Maybe he was so sure he couldn't turn that he wanted to see what a dose of vampire blood would do. Or maybe he had some half-assed attack plan bubbling in his brain.

The alpha's grin spread wide as he held up the crystal glass, holding it towards Sam in clear invitation. It only held a few spoonfuls of blood. But that's all it took to turn a human.

Sam's fingers tapped against the tabletop a few more times and then he stood, crossing the floor in a few quick strides. He took the glass from the vampire's hand, and threw him a lop-sided smile. Then he brought the cup to his lips, tilted the cup back and drank.

Ruby took a step away from the wall, itching to knock the glass out of Sam's hand. She waited for a shift in Sam's soul. A flicker of clashing energies like she'd seen with the djinn. But nothing happened.

Sam brought the once again emptied glass back down to the table, turned and spit a large mouthful of blood right at the alpha vamp's face. Then he reached his arm out behind him and pulled Ruby's machete out of her grip. The blade hurtled through the air and into Sam's waiting hand. He brought the blade down nearly instantly, but the vampire was long gone, moving so fast Ruby could barely see him.

Two strong hands grabbed her by the biceps and Ruby growled in frustration. Two vampires, one male, one female, had grabbed her, and there was a third coming towards her with a sigil-covered sack. Like she'd even consider smoking out and leaving Sam unprotected.

On the other hand, she didn't like getting sacks stuck over her head so she stopped fighting the vamps holding her, and slammed herself back against the wall, pulling them along with her using her own considerable strength and her mind.

Across the room, Sam had gotten himself pinned to the wall by the alpha vamp who was bringing his mouth down to Sam's throat.

"Sam!" Ruby screamed, as she brought her knee crashing into the vamp in front of her. He dropped the sack he'd been holding, and clutched his other one.

Ruby tried to will herself across the room, but found herself suddenly and terrifyingly, powerless. She sprinted forward, desperate to get to Sam in time, but right before she got to the head of the table, all the air in the room shuddered, filling with power as something stepped through.

For a moment, Ruby thought she'd gone mad. She'd spent centuries in Hell, lost so much of her humanity, of her life. She'd been hanging on to her last few memories of being alive like they were diamonds. The weakest of those memories were the last glimpses of her parents: they'd faded with time, growing dimmer in her mind with every decade. But when she saw the woman who'd appeared across from her, she knew exactly who it was.

"Mom?" she said, every logical part of her mind telling her she was wrong. But it looked like her. Exactly like her.

The woman smiled at Ruby, and then turned to the alpha vampire and Sam, grabbed them both by the shoulders and pulled them apart easily. She stepped between them and put her hand on the vampire's chest. "Play nice."

"Mother," the vampire said, and suddenly Ruby understood.

"Echidna..." she said under her breath.

The woman threw Ruby a smile over her shoulder. "I go by 'Eve' these days."

As Sam brought his hand to his throat, Echidna—Eve—shifted her form, her hair growing pale and her body growing taller. She brought her hand to Sam's cheek and clucked her tongue. "Boys. That'll heal quick, don't worry."

Sam's brow was furrowed in confusion. "Mom?"

So this was what Mary Winchester had looked like. Ruby had seen pictures, even a few memories from Sam and Dean's thoughts, but seeing her move and hearing her speak (even if it was just a facsimile), was something different altogether.

Ruby moved closer to Sam, figuring that if Eve didn't want her there she'd be dead already. Echidna...Eve was the goddess of Purgatory. The mother of all monsters. Even Azazel had spoken of her with respect and a tinge of fear—a rare thing with him. The power of Purgatory came largely from the sheer number of souls it housed. Monsters that had existed long before humans had, long before _angels_ had, lived there and Eve was the most powerful of all of them.

Eve, wearing Mary's face smiled at Sam beatifically. "Not exactly, but I can be." She turned to the alpha, grabbed a clean linen napkin from the table and cleaned the blood off of the vampire's chin and brow. "No need to fight."

"Mother, I offered him my gift and he turned me down. He _spit_ it back at me."

Eve giggled and gave Ruby a look. "Men."

Ruby was shocked by the casual feeling of warmth coming from such a powerful being. She watched, fascinated as Eve put her arm on the alpha's shoulder. "Your gift wouldn't have worked on him anyway. He's not quite human. He has no soul to alter. But don't worry, there's always a way."

Eve focused on Sam again. "Every human soul has the potential to be something more: demon, monster, god."

Sam's voice stayed carefully expressionless. "What about all the souls in Heaven?" He moved his hand just enough for Ruby to see the wound in Sam's neck.

"They're dying. They're being devoured slowly, one depleted metaphysical cell at a time." Eve took hold of Sam's hand and pulled it away from his bleeding throat. Then she ran her fingertips over the now much smaller wound. His flesh closed under her touch and her fingers came away bloody. "But you, you're something else entirely. You left a part of yourself behind, trapped with the Morningstar himself."

"Nothing I need," Sam said, watching her with more than a hint of fear in his eyes.

"No, you don't, do you?" She brought her blood-tipped fingers to her mouth and cleaned them, smiling at the taste. "You look like a human, taste like a demon, and kill like an angel. What does that make you, exactly?"

Sam didn't answer her. His shoulders were tense and his eyes were tracking every small movement the alpha vampire made behind Eve, sure that one of the two monsters would strike again soon.

But they weren't going to. Eve had stopped the alpha from killing Sam. For whatever reason, she wanted him alive. She had plans for him. Ruby found that far more terrifying. She was used to their lives being threatened, but this felt far more like recruitment. Sam would say no, of course...assuming he was given a choice.

"You're special, Sam. Your mom always knew that. And I know that, too." Eve turned to wink at Ruby. "I know that's why you're still looking out for him. It's important to see that he follows the right path, isn't it?"

"Yes," Ruby said unable to stop herself. "Please, we'll leave. He just wants to—"

"He wants to hunt," Eve said, her back still to Ruby. That's all he knows. He wants to hunt the greatest prey, and believe me, I understand." As Eve stepped in closer to Sam, Ruby could see Sam's body tensing unnaturally. Eve's power had locked him still.

Knowing she only had seconds to spare, Ruby pushed forward with all her strength but found herself frozen as well. She couldn't move. She couldn't help Sam. She couldn't do anything, but watch.

"But I can't let you hurt my first-born. I already have Crowley torturing them—so many of my children. I can see everything they see, and they're so scared. Terrified of that _demon_." Eve rolled her shoulders back. "That's why I haven't killed you. I saw what you did in Crowley's prison. You left my children alive."

"No fun shooting fish in a barrel," Sam said.

"Of course you don't. Where's the challenge in that?" Eve nodded, satisfied. "So, here's the deal, Sam. I'm going to give you something. I'm going to make you perfect. You will grow stronger every day until there is nothing on, below or above this world that you can't kill."

"And...in exchange?" Sam asked, his voice completely calm.

"You kill Crowley for me."

"We tried. There was something protecting him," Sam said.

"He's allied himself with an angel. All you need to do is make yourself strong enough to take both of them on. And you will." Eve put her hand on the back of Sam's head, stroking her fingers through his hair.

Ruby couldn't read Sam's thoughts, not with Eve in the room, but she could tell by his expression that he was far more curious now, than worried about his survival.

"Why don't you kill Crowley yourself?" Ruby asked.

"Politics," Eve said, throwing Ruby a look of vague irritation. "Whoever kills the king of Hell is vying for the throne. I have no interest in that, and I certainly have no intention of going to war with both Heaven and Hell if I can avoid it. And that is _exactly_ what would happen if I killed Crowley."

"Why would Heaven care if you killed Crowley?" Sam asked. "They hate him as much as everybody else. Probably more."

"True, but if I kill him, Hell would be mine for the taking, which means I'd have more power than Heaven, and that would make me a threat." Eve frowned. "I was happy with our arrangement. Up until now, my children would kill a few humans, turn a few others. Some humans killed my children too, if they were clever enough. It was fair. But now? Crowley's torturing my sons and daughters, and he has an angel helping him. So, fine. They want a war, they've got one. My children are turning as many as they can as quickly as they can and every turned human is a Purgatory-bound soul."

"What good does that do?" Sam scoffed. "Crowley can just have his demons kill all the new monsters. An angel could take out what—hundreds, thousands at a time?"

"Maybe you're not as bright as I thought," Eve said, frowning. "Did your brains get stuck down in the cage along with your soul?"

"He doesn't know," Ruby said as she understood what Eve was planning. "He doesn't understand what souls really are."

"How could he?" Eve turned back to Sam. "Think of it this way. To some of us—upper management, if you will—souls are power. They're like fuel cells: each soul a tiny little nuclear reactor. Put them together and you have the sun."

"That's why Crowley wants to open Purgatory," Ruby said as the pieces started to fit together. "For the souls."

"And his angel friend wants a cut, too," Eve said. "Heaven hasn't been too stable from what I've heard. It's civil war up there. Again." She smirked to herself. "Lucifer must find this all hilarious."

Ruby swallowed, her throat suddenly dry. "Did you know him?"

"The Morningstar?" Her smile widened. "Of course I did. He was beautiful, and as strong as they come up there." She brought her hand down to Sam's chest and pushed her palm flat against him. "He had heart. And more of a spine than the rest of his siblings."

"Do you know— I mean, can you hear him in the cage?" Ruby couldn't fight back the flicker of hope, deep in her chest. If Eve was half as strong as she'd heard then maybe she could hear him, maybe she _knew_ —

"You're looking for guidance, aren't you?" Eve said. "You have no idea what Lucifer wants you to do. You're not even sure that matters anymore."

Ruby shook her head. She was scared. She didn't know what Eve was about to do to Sam, but she had a pretty good idea. She was going to change him and any ounce of control Ruby had over him would disappear. He might kill her the first chance he got, considering her nothing but prey. At best, she'd be irrelevant and he'd ignore her.

 _You will never be irrelevant to him. You're the closest thing he has to a friend. And you're so much more than that. You brought him this far._ Eve told her, without ever taking her eyes off of Sam. She leaned forward suddenly, brought her hand behind Sam's head and pulled him down into a deep kiss.

At first, Sam fought against her, out of fear, disgust or sheer self-preservation.

Ruby watched his struggle weaken and then stop as he gave in to whatever Eve was doing. The yellow light inside of Sam's veins flickered and shifted as Eve force-fed him something new and completely different. Streaks of red and grey flowed into Sam, rippling under his skin as his body responded to Eve's magic. He didn't look any different on the outside, but the void where his soul should have been was starting to fill, and what was taking its place didn't look the least bit human.


	4. Chapter 4

 

CHAPTER 4

By the time Eve pulled back, the sheer over-bleed of power in the room was stifling. With one last look at Ruby, she said. _Stop worrying about what Lucifer wants, and start figuring out what **you** want. Sam needs guidance. He has no compass without his soul. So, guide him._

The vampires in the room, including the alpha, all turned to Eve right before she vanished. Then their focus shifted entirely to Ruby and Sam.

Sam took a shaky step towards Ruby, his eyes still glazed as his mind and body tried to process what had happened. He looked from Ruby to the vampires and made a growling noise that could've been amusement or a warning.

"They're free to go," the alpha said, as he took his seat at the head of the table again.

The other vampires complied, stepping back closer against the wall until Ruby and Sam had clear passage.

Right before they reached the large pine door that led out of the dining room, the father vampire added, "Understand, Sam, that we are not lambs awaiting slaughter. If mother says you hunt, then you hunt, but we will not make it easy on you."

******  
Sam spent the drive away from the alpha's manor, looking for all intents and purposes like he was sleeping. His eyes were closed, but his eyelids moved, like he was dreaming. His breathing was shallow, and when Ruby turned off the interstate onto another highway headed south just a little too quickly, he jerked upright.

"Where are we going?" he asked.

"To get some food and a room for the night. I wanted to get a few hundred miles between us and the alpha's nest first, though."

"I'm starving," Sam said.

"I figured." Her eyes flicked up to the exit signs ahead. "Denny's, Burger King or Texaco?"

Sam said nothing for a few seconds and turned to look out the window. "Take the next exit. "

"Planning on it." Ruby reached out with her mind tentatively, trying to figure out what Sam was thinking, but felt nothing. Whatever Eve had done had effectively locked Ruby out. Temporarily, if she had anything to say about it. She pulled onto the local roads and repeated her question. "Denny's, Burger King—"

"There," Sam said, pointing at a sign up ahead.

"The Sports Authority?"

"There's a shifter working security there."

"How do you know that?" Ruby asked, even though she already knew the answer.

"I can see them. I can see _all_ of them. Little pinpricks all over the map."

"Eve gave you monster-GPS?" Ruby asked as she pulled into the parking lot.

"I think she's letting me see through her. I can see through their eyes, if I'm close. Let me out." Sam reached for the door handle before Ruby had even stopped the car.

"A couple more seconds won't kill you. You need to fill me in on the plan first, Rambo." Ruby watched the back door to the store. It wouldn't be too populated this time of day.

"I go in, corner him in a back room and snap his neck," Sam thought for a second and added, "Maybe I'll slit his throat instead, get a taste of his blood first."

Ruby blinked. "Or, you could wait for him to come outside."

"Don't feel like waiting," Sam said and threw open the door to the car with finality.

"It'll take me five minutes, tops," Ruby said.

"You think you can mind-whammy him?"

"Can you?"

Sam shook his head. "Not sure, but if I can't and I try, that'll tip him off."

Ruby walked past Sam and patted him on the shoulder. "Five minutes, okay?" She unzipped her jacket, pulled it off on her way into the store and came out with the shifter following her four minutes later.

He was just a kid, seventeen at most—as old as the skin he'd chosen, and Ruby almost felt bad leading him out to Sam. Almost. Shifters were born monsters, like rougarous, like djinn, like a myriad of other things. He never chose to be what he was, he just was.

She'd tried to send Sam a message once she was close to the back door, and was pretty sure he'd heard her, even though she couldn't pick up on his thoughts since Eve's little upgrade. She brought the shifter past the dumpster out back and he offered her a cigarette. She accepted and waited for him to light it for her.

"So yeah, the hours are okay, I bet I can get you an interview later today," he said, smiling.

"That'd be great." Ruby stood upright, tasting the bitter smoke in the air, just in time to see Sam come around the corner, grab the kid in a headlock and bring his silver knife to his throat.

The shifter grimaced in pain, but he couldn't scream, Sam's arm holding his head firmly in place.

Swiftly, Sam cut the base of the shifter's neck and leaned down over the wound.

The kid thrashed in Sam's grip, trying to break free, but he wasn't nearly strong enough and soon his legs stopped kicking and his face turned from shock and anger to terror. Then there was a crack and a strange squishing sound, and suddenly Sam was left holding nothing but a chunk of the shifter's flesh.

The shifter had altered his skeleton from one second to the next, slipping out of Sam's hold as he shed his skin. He was raw looking underneath—muscle tissue over an impossibly slim frame, with wide, shining eyes and a hole for a mouth. The sad-looking thing gave Ruby one last, hurt look and then ran.

Sam shook off his temporary confusion, took aim with his knife and threw, hitting the shifter in the back. It staggered, reached a spindly arm behind itself and pulled the dagger out, then kept running.

Ruby expected Sam to take off after it, or curse the fact that it was getting away. What she didn't expect was for Sam to turn his attention back to the strip of shifter flesh in his hand, bring it up to his mouth and start eating it like it was jerky. She stared at him in disgust for a few seconds.

Sam finished off the strip he'd been holding within seconds, then eyed the pile of already dissolving flesh at their feet.

"Sam, no. Gross," Ruby positioned herself in between the pile and Sam. "I thought you were supposed to taste its blood, not… _eat_ it."

Sam licked his lips, eyes dilated as he looked down at her. "I want more."

"Shifter? Or can we find something less disgusting?"

Sam was looking at her, but he hadn't heard a word she'd said. He put his hand on the side of her face and his fingers felt prickly. She almost backed away, but then she saw the skin of his face start to ripple. For just a moment, his skin became blotchier and his face changed—his eyes growing rounder and further apart, and his lips thinning. He had a mustache and a beard and he looked just like…

"Who's Mr. Henry?" Sam asked, as his appearance returned to normal.

Ruby repressed a shudder and turned away from Sam. "Nobody."

"Really?" Sam scoffed. "Because you still think about tearing him apart."

Ruby walked back to the car in silence.

*******

They did end up going to a Burger King. Ruby needed to see Sam eating something less off-putting, and Burger King still had damn good fries. Sam ate his chicken sandwich methodically, and quickly, like he was expecting to leave the minute he was done.

"I can't see into your head anymore," Ruby said, swirling a fry through her ring of ketchup.

"Eve did something. Probably so I can keep Crowley out, and Castiel."

"Handy." Her Pepsi was flat and weak on the syrup. "What else did you see? When you looked."

Sam's lips quirked. "I think I saw your life as a human, or…a witch I guess. You were pretty pissed off."

"Story of my life. People keep pissing me off."

"Let's go," Sam said standing.

Ruby pointed at her fries.

"Take them with you."

"Seriously? You can't wait another three goddamn minutes?"

She could practically hear Sam's teeth grinding as he sat back down.

"There's a skinwalker pack in Greenville, a rougarou ten miles away, a werewolf in Fairview, and a wendigo in the park up the highway."

"Which one do you want?" Ruby deliberately took the tiniest bite she possibly could off of her fry, watching Sam's frustration rise.

"All of them."

"Four hunts, in one day?"

"Why not? The faster we do this, the sooner we can stop Crowley." Sam stuffed his sandwich wrapper into his cup and crushed the whole thing into a little ball.

"It'd be nice to rest up, shower, break some mattress springs." She ate her last two fries in one mouthful. "Fine. Let's go to Greensville."

*******

By the time they finally pulled into a motel parking lot, it was early the next morning.

They'd taken out the wendigo first, the rougarou second, the werewolf third and the whole skinwalker pack fourth. Sam had taken a sampling of each one, which had infuriated the wendigo and confused the rougarou.

The sheer speed at which they'd torn through the skinwalkers had been impressive. They didn't get knocked down once, and not a single dog got the chance to run away. The speed and strength Sam had picked up from the wendigo had given him a major advantage against the pack.

Sam fell into the car, practically high from the rush of the skinwalkers' power. He'd taken flesh and blood from all eight of them. "There's an arachne twenty miles that way," he said, pointing out his window to the right.

"That's nice. We're going to go get cleaned up first though." Ruby expected a protest, or at the very least a displeased grunt, but when she looked over to Sam he was sleeping.

"What did she do to you, Sam?" Ruby asked our loud.

_"What did you do?" asked Eleanor Jacobs, wringing her hands together._

_"I did what you asked me to do," Ruby said. It was a new name for her, Ruby, but it was one she liked, one that fit her new life. She touched the red gem hanging in the hollow of her throat—a gift from the demon that had given her power._

_Eleanor looked up and wiped at her nose, nervously. "No, no I said I wanted him to forget about her. I wanted him to be loyal to me." Her blue eyes were rimmed with red, but not in anger anymore. This time she looked petrified._

_"And is that not exactly what has happened?" Ruby looked out the window at the pallid sun. It was going to rain again today. Third day in a row._

_"I wanted him to love me again." Eleanor put her hands down on Ruby's small table. "Like he used to."_

_"You made that very clear. Has he not been showering you with attention?"_

_"He won't stop. I had to get him drunk just to get away for a few minutes."_

_Ruby laughed. "So what's the problem?"_

_"He's forgotten. So much. Not just about Natalie, but her family, our neighbors, his father— he can't remember his own father." Her eyes got wider. "He doesn't remember any of them."_

_"I told you there was a price," Ruby said, standing up. "And I warned you not to do this."_

_Eleanor said nothing but nodded miserably as a tear ran down her ruddy cheek._

_"You should get back home before he wakes up."_

_The clouds had grown thicker and a faint rumble of thunder rolled along with the first few sounds of the church bells._

 

After paying for a room, Ruby carried Sam onto the bed, and pulled off his shoes. He needed to shower. They needed to shower.

Ruby thought about heading right into the bathroom and using up all the hot water. It sounded like a wonderful plan, and she found herself pulling a change of clothes out of her bag.

From the bed, Sam made a noise. Something so soft it could only have come from a dream.

Ruby laid down next to him and watched his eyeballs move underneath the lids. He was filthy, his face still streaked with monster-blood. There was still a smudge of blood on his throat from where the rougarou had bitten Sam back. Sam had healed within three seconds flat. After another few days on this type of schedule he'd probably be completely impenetrable.

She licked the tip of her thumb and moved it across the dried blood, cleaning it off as gently as she could.

His breathing stayed just as even, but his heart sped up infinitesimally and the left side of his mouth curved slowly into a smile.

Ruby found herself pinned underneath Sam less than half a second later. His eyes were open and shining—literally. She could see his irises flick between options: the vertically contracting, pale eyes of a shifter; the amber, lupine eyes of a werewolf and the bloodshot hunger of the rougarou all offering themselves, a whole new set of tools for him to use.

"You were dreaming," Ruby said.

"I don't sleep," Sam said, blinking his eyes from wolf to human to solid black.

"You did. Just now. You have been, ever since—"

"How long?" Sam asked, his heart beating faster. His oil-slick black eyes searched hers. "A few minutes, at most. Maybe I need to rest after taking in that much. I feel good. _Really_ good."

"Fine by me. I like a break every now and then, too. Plus. Showers."

Sam chuckled deep in his throat and slid down the length of Ruby's torso, stopping right by her belly-button to nip at the skin below it.

"Shower," she repeated.

His long fingers worked open her belt-buckle and popped open the button beneath.

"Soap and water."

Sam slid down lower, opening the zipper of her pants with a thought and pulled at the pant-legs.

"Fine. You want to play? Play by my rules," Ruby said before vanishing and reappearing in said shower. She left her pants behind and heard Sam fall on his ass with a curse, holding onto nothing but denim.

She had just enough time to strip off the rest of her clothes, turn on the shower and climb in before a very naked and very insistent Sam climbed in behind her.

******

Three days later, right after they took down a wraith, Meg appeared, wearing a dark blue leather jacket and a sour expression.

"You're timing's impeccable," Ruby said as she snapped off the wraith's right spike and tossed it to Sam, who was busy snacking on the left. He caught it without looking, his eyes still tracking the wraith's corpse, looking for other concentrations of power.

"That's gross," Meg said, watching Sam.

"That's nothing. You should have seen what he did with the rougarou." Ruby walked Meg towards the car as she heard the unmistakable sound of Sam cracking open the wraith's skull. Four brains in a week then. That had to be some kind of record. "So, learn something?" she asked the other demon.

Meg scoffed. "Dean's still a dick, Castiel's still annoying and the Campbells are all a bunch of gorillas. Grandpappy Samuel there, he's got the whole group under his thumb. And guess who he's working for?"

It wasn't that big a surprise really. "Crowley."

"Give that lady a cigar," Meg chewed on her lip. "Not just him. Three of their crew were possessed. Dean killed two of them."

"And Castiel?" Ruby asked.

"It's not exactly easy to follow an angel," Meg said glowering. "But then, he's not the brightest tree-topper." She smirked. "He's definitely hiding something. Dean knows it too."

"Did they try to kill you?"

"Only twice so far. And once was totally my bad. I may have said something less than flattering about the old Sam." Meg looked over to the wraith-corpse. "He didn't used to be such a messy eater."

Ruby laughed. "Yeah he did. He's always had a problem controlling his appetite." She smiled. "That's why he's perfect for this. That's why we're gonna win."

"Lucifer made him a monster-eater?"

"No. Eve did."

"Who's Eve?" Meg asked.

Ruby showed her with a quick replay of images. The alpha vampire and Eve shifting from one mother's form to the next.

"Echidna…" Meg said, in wonder, "…she's here?"

"Yup. And she wants Crowley dead as much as we do."

"That explains the dragons." Meg's lips quirked.

"Dragons?" Ruby repeated incredulously.

Sam eyes lit up and he grinned at them, wiping bits of grey matter from his chin. "Dragons?"

*******

Crocatta, more vampires, more dragons, changelings, kitsune, every damn monster in existence was on the menu over the course of the next few weeks. The more Sam fed, the stronger he got. He'd thrown a car after a dragon that tried to fly away, knocking it out of the air. He spent the rest of the night pissed that he couldn't fly.

Sam also slept more. He was back up to four hours a night by the end of the month, and Ruby started to get used to having time by herself again. She used her spare hours to practice her spell-work, trying every few nights to get back into Sam's head.

When she finally got in, it was through a scrying bowl. She'd focused it on Sam's thoughts, swishing a few loose strands of his hair around until she finally started to see the images he was seeing: a forest, dark and thick. He ran on all fours, chasing something, everything around him—strange animals—things Ruby had never seen before, scaled and feathered and large as rhinos, and Sam took them down, one by one, never tiring.

She shifted her eyes to where he lay sleeping and thought she could see something shifting inside his skin, huge and heavily muscled, with two curving horns on the sides of its head.

Her scrying bowl flickered and the forest image was replaced with Meg's lopsided grin.

 _Knock, knock,_ she said, her voice echoing as it reverberated through her bowl of blood to Ruby's bowl of water. _Want to tell me where you two are holed up? I've got news._

Sam sat up at the sound of Meg's voice, his eyes a dark amber, stuck somewhere between wolf and lion. He blinked and looked at Ruby questioningly.

"420 Independence Freeway, Room 5H," Ruby said to the bowl.

Sam turned towards the door a second before the air there flickered.

"Awww…did I interrupt your beauty nap?" Meg asked, from just inside the door.

"You could knock," Ruby said.

"I did." Meg nodded towards Ruby's bowl, walked over to the bed and plopped down next to Sam. "Crowley and Castiel are in cahoots. It's official."

"Is that so?" Sam asked. "What did you see?"

"Crowley's been funding Cas's war-fund. There's 15,000 souls missing from Hell. One guess where they went?" Meg cocked an eyebrow.

"No kidding," Ruby let out a huff. "So the rumors are true? There's a civil war up there again?" She looked up towards the ceiling, trying to imagine what the angel war of today looked like.

"Raphael vs. Castiel," Meg held out her hands and wiggled her fingers. "The archangel of the East and the angel who likes Columbo a little too much. The ultimate showdown!"

"How's Castiel going to hold his own against an archangel?" Sam asked.

"Pay attention," Meg said. "Souls, Sam."

"Castiel's using the souls against Raphael?" Sam asked. "They can do that?"

"Sure. Angels use souls for all kinds of ammunition. We're more into arts and crafts downstairs." Meg looked over to the table Ruby was sitting at. "Got any coffee?"

"No." Ruby thought for a second. "Is Castiel up there now?"

"Yup," watched him poof away when Dean was starting to ask the right questions. Meg looked down at her fingernails. "He'll be back in a few days though. Always is."

Ruby turned to Sam, who nodded at her and climbed out of the bed. She picked up her scrying bowl, dumped the water out into the sink and set it back onto the table. Then she brought out her knife, pricked the tip of her thumb with it and dribbled a few drops into the bowl.

Sam came closer, his eyes temporarily sticking to her thumb before looking back up at her eyes. He reached down to grab a box from the floor and flipped open the lid, pulling two containers out and pouring their contents into the bowl.

Ruby started chanting. "Ad construgendum ad ligandum—"

"What the hell are you doing?" Meg said, her eyebrows creeping up.

"—eos pariter et solvendum et ad congregantum eos coram me," Ruby's eyes flipped to black as she willed the contents of the bowl to burst into flame.

The light above them flickered, and Meg backed away a few steps just before Crowley appeared right in front of the table.

"Oh for fuck's sake," he said, glaring from Ruby to Sam. "Do you really think you can—"

Before the demon-king could even finish his sentence, he started to light up on the inside. Crowley clutched at his throat futilely, as Sam brought his fingers together into a fist, extinguishing Crowley's soul.

With a heavy thump, Crowley's empty shell fell onto the motel's thin carpet. Sam took a deep, satisfied breath. Ruby smiled at him proudly.

"That was anticlimactic," Meg said.

"Now all we have to worry about is Castiel," Ruby said.

"Ding dong the dick is dead," Meg nudged Crowley's dead host body with her boot, and then looked up to Sam. "Throne of Hell: going once…"

"I don't want to be king," Sam said, annoyed.

"Going twice?" Meg took another few steps back and then vanished as she pointed to herself and said, "Sold."

*******

The air had barely cleared of smoke-scent from the summoning herbs before Eve appeared, still wearing Mary Winchester's face.

"Thank you," she said, smiling first at Sam, then at Ruby. "Hell is better off without him anyway."

"Meg's planning on taking the crown," Ruby said. "Until Lucifer's free again."

Eve nodded. "Fine. As long as she doesn't try to follow through with Crowley's misguided plans, we won't have a problem." She turned to Sam and looked him over. "You look good, Sam."

Ruby watched the shadowy beast inside of Sam shift in response to Eve's voice—puffing out its chest and smiling with a mouthful of razor-sharp teeth.

"I feel good," Sam said. "Stronger. A lot stronger."

"You took down three of my dragons," Eve said flatly.

Ruby tensed, waiting for a reprimand.

"That's impressive, and it'll help you with the angels more than you know." Eve continued, "Just because Crowley's dead, doesn't mean the plan is." She walked closer to Sam. "You'll stop the angels too, won't you?"

Sam's jaw twitched in annoyance. "I've never killed an angel. I don't know if I can."

"You won't know until you try," Eve patted his shoulder. "They can be tough…and ornery, but stick with your training routine and you'll be able to take them down easy."

"It's Castiel, but that's not the real problem" Ruby said, wanting to make sure Eve understood what they were up against. "He's warring against Raphael, and Raphael's the strongest angel left up there."

Eve nodded. "You think he'll try to make a grab for the souls too."

"Why wouldn't he?" Sam asked. "It's a power struggle. If the souls from purgatory are the ammo, then he'd be stupid not to try."

"They're all stupid," Eve said bitterly. "They don't have the stomach for my kind, but they're too arrogant to see it." Her gaze turned distant. "I've seen it." She blinked and faced Sam and Ruby again with another smile firmly in place. "It doesn't matter. You'll stop them."

"You have a lot of faith in us," Ruby said.

"Faith has nothing to do with it," Eve said, chuckling. She was hiding something, and it was starting to bug Ruby. A lot.

"How many more do I need to hunt before I can take on an archangel?" Sam asked, cracking the knuckles in his right hand. He was ready to get going, itchy under his skin for another fight.

"Go for quality, not quantity," Eve said, right before she vanished. No good-bye, no farewell.

Ruby looked down at Crowley's corpse and then back up at Sam. "Ready to check out?"

******

They averaged five hunts a day—on one occasion tracking down and killing a total of twenty-eight monsters on one day. Technically the last three vampires fell at two minutes past midnight, but Sam had been holding them since 11:58; suspended in midair while he dealt with the rest. That day he'd challenged himself to kill and feed without ever touching any of them with his hands. He'd kept that up until three in the afternoon, when a sea undine knocked him off balance and pulled him underwater.

Reacting on instinct and completely lacking in common sense, Sam lashed out with the last power he'd absorbed and mastered earlier that day when they'd killed the storm elemental. The lake was struck by a lightning bolt so thick it could never occur naturally, and the whole body of water bubbled and steamed. One fish after the other floated to the surface, followed by six undines.

Ruby had just started to consider panicking when Sam's head bobbed up out of the water. He swam over to her with a few quick strokes, stripped out of his wet shirt, shook his hair like a dog and said, "This totally counts as a bath."

When they got back to the car, Sam's cellphone was flashing '1 new message.' Sam picked it up, curious. "The only one who has this number is you," he said, his eyes meeting Ruby's, as he brought the phone to his ear.

"Not anymore," Ruby said. She knew whose voice would be on the recording.

"Dean," Sam said. As if there'd been any other possibility.

Ruby could only pick up word fragments from the phone message, the speaker covered nearly entirely by Sam's hair. Last time around, she could've filled in the blanks with what echoed in Sam's mind, or his expression. She still remembered the way his whole body posture had crumpled after hearing Dean's message the night he killed Lilith. She'd never thanked the angels for that particular piece of assistance. She probably never would.

"What'd he have to say?" she asked, when Sam hung up.

"That we were right about Castiel—that he was working with Crowley. Meg told him everything, but he didn't believe it until he saw Castiel kill an angel, one of his own soldiers, when he called him out on it." Sam's brow furrowed. "He wants to see me. Says he needs my help to stop him"

Ruby nodded as she shifted lanes. "You know it's a trap, right?"

"Yup."

"But we're gonna go anyway."

"I'm going. Not you. He was very specific."

Ruby scoffed. "Of course he was. Sam, I'm not letting you do this alone you want me to stay invisible, fine, but I'm not staying behind."

"No, you are. I'll lock you in a devil's trap if I have to. If Dean sees you again, he'll kill you."

Despite the shitty situation, Ruby couldn't help but smile a little at that. "You trying to protect me?"

"You're a good ally."

"Mm-hmm, and I taste good too, don't I?" Ruby pushed the pedal down a little further as she turned onto the main highway. She wanted to get to a bed fast. If Sam was about to head off to see Dean, she wanted…

She wanted.

******

Sam drank from her the second they got to their new motel room and didn't even stop to take off her clothes or his, tearing at the fabric of her pants instead as he pushed her onto the bed. The corduroy came apart easily, and Ruby pulled apart his shirt eager to feel the heat radiating off him.

When he pushed up into her, his eyes met hers and they flickered from his own shade of hazel-green to black. She could see herself reflected in them until he pulled her in tight to drink from the soft skin just below her shoulder. His teeth were sharper now, when he wanted them to be, and he parted her flesh easily.

"Don't die," she said, as she clawed into his lower back, making him arch.

"I don't want to die." Sam shifted his hands down and slid them under her, picking her up off the bed as he sat up. "I'm not scared of things like I should be, I know that. When I hunt I never worry about dying because I know I have the advantage. I'm better than them. I'm stronger, and faster, and most of them can't even hurt me anymore." He swung one of his long legs off the bed and stood up, pulling Ruby tightly against him.

Ruby hooked her feet behind his back and locked her mouth around the side of his neck, making him growl low.

"But I think I might die this time. And…I don't want to." He walked them over to the wall and propped her back up against the cool surface. His eyes looked pale white in the darkness, and she thought of Lilith of Alistair. She'd always wondered how much of a boost he would have gotten from their blood.

"I'm strong Ruby, I'm so damn strong, but Dean— he's not gonna stop until he— "

Ruby pushed down on top of him, and pulled him closer to the wall, closer against her.

"He's not gonna stop," Sam said. "He wants his brother back, and I'm not him."

"But you are. You _are_ a part of him. You're what he is underneath all the guilt and fear. You're the best of him." She wrapped her arms tighter around Sam's neck and pulled herself up until she could reach the salty-sweaty skin at the base of his neck.

"Dean doesn't care. He's going to do whatever it takes to get his brother's soul back, and I think if he does, then I—"

She ran her tongue up the side of his throat and then bit down harder, right over his carotid.

Sam cried out and grabbed her by the hair trying to pull her off.

She fought him until she tasted his blood. Then she let him pull her back and smiled, feeling the salty drops coating her lips.

"If Dean gets Sammy's soul back in my body, then whatever I am—I'm going to die. And I don't want to. I like this life. I like hunting. I like you. You make me feel…"

"Sanguis sanguinis mei," Ruby ran her finger over the blood on her lips and cleaned it off with her tongue.

Sam pressed his mouth against hers, and groaned as Ruby released the power she'd been building, sending everything she could into him, his blood in her forming a link between them, letting her blood amplify everything he could do. Every skill he'd picked up from Eve's children finding a demonic complement.

His eyes rolled back in pleasure and his power crested as he did, setting the room alight with pure energy. It spread out from him like golden lightning, arcing out until it reached the walls. Ruby cried out, holding herself against him tightly while her own power joined his, shattering the light fixture above them and the small mirror in the bathroom.

Sam managed to maneuver them back towards the bed and then collapsed on top of Ruby.

"Oof," she said, pushing him off until he rolled over on his back. "I'm going with you."

"No you're not." She didn't even feel his power reach for her. It was just suddenly there, holding her flat against the bed—a dozen hands, solid metal grips with absolutely no give.

"Sam, let me up. I'm going with you."

"No. I have to do this alone."

"No you don't!" She tried frantically to think of something that would persuade him. "You need my help."

"I'm not him. If Dean— if he gets Sam's soul back, he might come back to you. He has to, after what I've done to this body, he won't be able to survive without you."

"I don't want him. I want you." She reached out with him with her mind, trying to get him to turn around. "I made you."

"I'm sorry," he said, but his back was still turned to her.

"No, you're not. You don't know how to be sorry," Ruby said, still testing his hold.

"I'll be fine." He scoffed. "After what you just gave me, I think I really can take down an archangel. You know how strong I am."

"Yeah, and I know your brother. He wants you back the way you were, and he's not going to stop until he figures out a way." She stopped fighting and closed her eyes. "Sam, you're not coming back from this. Not the way you are now."

His head turned just enough for her to see the side of his face. His jaw twitched once, and then he opened the door and left.

Ruby waited until the count of one hundred and twenty and then started chanting, slowly and steadily. _Mater monstrum exaudi me, mater monstrum…_

"I'm not normally one for house calls," said her mother's voice. "And yet with you it seems to be becoming a habit."

Ruby turned her eyes as far as she could and saw Eve, wearing her mother's face once again. She was wearing a simple white cotton dress and her black hair hung loose around her shoulders.

"He's already headed onto the interstate," Eve said walking closer to where Ruby lay. "Thats a pretty good range."

"Yeah," Ruby scoffed. "You gonna let me up?"

The room filled with soft peals of laughter. "You just summoned me here, you presumptuous dirt-speck. No tribute, no ritual, nothing but a plea. You really think you're in any position to be making demands?"

"No. But you could've ignored me, and you didn't. Which means you want to help me. You want to help Sam."

Eve snapped her fingers and the invisible binds holding Ruby simply vanished. "I made a significant investment in Sam's evolution," said the goddess of Purgatory. "I gave him access to more power than any of my other children. I've helped you plenty."

"Have you?" Ruby asked, rolling her head to work out the crick in her neck. She brought her hand up to the wound in her flesh. It had closed already, but she could still feel Sam's teeth-marks.

"You're questioning my methods?" Eve asked, her eyes narrowed.

"No, I'm questioning the validity of your statement." Ruby stood up and walked to the sink to get some water. "Want a drink?"

Eve said nothing, but when Ruby turned back, her eyes were amused. "Tell me why you think I'm lying, little witch."

"Sam is Lucifer's vessel. That's the only reason you could change him the way you did. Anybody else would've imploded already."

A small smile spread across Eve's lips.

"But Sam…he's meant to hold an archangel's power, and more. Lucifer designed him to be the end game." Ruby sat down across from her at the small table. "So you figured you'd give Sam a whole different menu. Just to see what happens."

"He's powerful." Eve's smile spread into a grin. "Stronger than any demon, stronger than any one angel and stronger than my first born."

"Yup. He took down Crowley easy and Castiel won't be a problem. It's Dean I'm worried about."

"Sam's brother?"

Ruby nodded.

"You're wise for your young age. Love is always the most dangerous force. Dean wants his brother back in one piece. You think he'll succeed?"

"I think he'll do anything it takes."

"Sam fed from you before he left," Eve tilted her head and looked at the bed. "In more ways than one." She nodded approvingly. "You gave him a boost."

"Best I could do on short notice." Ruby thought of the tidal wave of power she'd sent into Sam. "Castiel has allies. And they'll be there. I'm sure Sam can hold his own against two, but three angels, four? However many they bring? Not to mention Raphael and whoever he brings along. And Dean— Sam might not think he has soft spots anymore, but if he does…" She paused, running her fingers over the last fading cut on her arm. "Sam needs me there."

"Is that what this is? You're asking me to give you a ride?" Eve stood up and turned to look out the window.

"Maybe. Yes." Ruby followed Eve but kept her distance, standing a few feet behind her. "You want us to keep the angels from getting their hands on Purgatory's souls. I want that too, and I'll do everything I can to make sure that happens, but I'm not going to be able to get to where it's all going down without help. Not with angels and Dean Winchester there. They'll kill me."

"You fear your own death?" Eve said. "That's only natural. But sometimes death is just the next step. It's not always the end. You know that better than anyone."

Ruby nodded. "If you don't want to help, fine. Sorry I bothered you."

"I can't be there. Not yet. Just like with Crowley—I kill an archangel, I'll be calling Heaven to war against me. But what I _can_ give you is protection." Eve held out her hand, and Ruby stepped forward to meet her, understanding spreading through her limbs and then her mind. Eve laid her hand gently against her cheek. When Eve's skin touched hers the circuit completed, and a current ran through Ruby. Gentle at first, a soft echo of the power she'd raised with Sam only minutes earlier. Eve pressed her fingertips tighter against Ruby's skin and the energy doubled, causing Ruby's eyes to fly open as she gasped for air. She couldn't see a thing past the haze of power thick in her mind, but images flickered through her thoughts—familiar ones from long ago of the dark woods, and a beast that lapped at her blood.

"We're not so different, you and I," Eve said as she clasped her fingers tight around Ruby's and pulled her in close. "We just want what's best for our blood. That's what Sam is to you, I understand. And he's mine now too. But you're not. You serve a different god. All I can do is give you my blessing. I can't change what you are at your core. I wouldn't have been able to change Sam either if it weren't for that hungry void inside of him." Her smile was soft and her voice dropped to almost a whisper as she added. "He was so empty without a soul. Just waiting to be filled."

Whatever artificial calm she'd been feeling disappeared instantly. Ruby pulled back from Eve. "What did you do to him? Really?"

Eve laughed. "What you should be asking is, what did I do to _you_?"

Ruby opened her mouth to answer and then slammed it shut as a short, triple edged silver sword flew right at her head. She ducked just in time to avoid its sharp tip. The motel room had disappeared. She was in another, even larger operating room—at Crowley's prison.

"You were most definitely not on the guest list either," said a low voice. Ruby turned and saw a woman looking at her with amused eyes. Not a woman, an angel. Based on her power alone, Ruby knew she was looking at an archangel. It couldn't be Lucifer or Michael, and Gabriel had been MIA for as long as she could remember, so that left only one option. "Raphael."

"A demon that knows her angels. How quaint," said Raphael, raising an arm out, fingers spread wide. Ruby squeezed her eyes in reflex, waiting for the inevitable burn of holy fire.

Nothing happened.

"Ruby!" Sam's voice called out from the other side of the room.

She opened her eyes again, searching for him. He ran across the room, long legs carrying him quickly, but with a flick from Raphael's hand, he was sent crashing into the wall, hard enough to crack several of the bricks.

Raphael's dark eyes focused on Ruby and narrowed.

The oddest sensation blossomed in Ruby's chest and spread through her limbs as the archangel's power crashed into her and did nothing.

"Who is protecting you?" The archangel's eyes narrowed

"Look out!" Sam yelled, as he pushed himself back up off the floor.

Less than a second later, Dean crashed into Ruby, and pinned her to the floor. "This day's starting to look up after all," he said, holding a gun to her head. The Colt.

Ruby could feel its magic just from the touch of the cool metal against her skin.

Dean cocked the gun. "Stay dead this time."

A burst of power knocked the Colt from Dean's hand.

Ruby and Dean both turned to find Sam standing a few feet away from the wall he'd collided with. His hand was stretched out towards them.

"After everything she did to you, you're still gonna choose her over me?" Dean snarled at him. "Sam would never do that. My _brother_ would never do that!"

"Your brother would never do this either," Sam said, as he pulled his fingers into a fist.

Dean's eyes rolled back into his head and he collapsed, asleep.

Sam rushed to Ruby's side and held his hand down to her.

She tried to glare at him, but her mouth was curved the other way. "I'm fine."

"When did it wear off?" Sam cocked his head to the side. "I thought I could keep a hold on you from here."

"About two minutes after you left," she lied. "Maybe it's the wards in this place."

 _Maybe,_ Sam slipped into her thoughts. _Or maybe you had help._

_Shut up or this won't work. We need to take the archangel down._

_Archangel? That explains it,_ Sam said. _I can't touch her._

"Honestly…" Raphael said with an amused expression. "You really think I can't hear every little thought you two are having? You might be the heavy-weight champs in your anthill, but you're still ants."

"You are all ants," said a new voice. "And such talkative ones, too."

Sam's face shifted to surprise and paled just a tinge. "Death."

"In the flesh, so to speak." said the Horseman. He walked over to Dean and looked down at him.

Dean woke up and rubbed his head, then froze when he saw Death smiling down at him.

"You were right about the Belgian fries," said the horseman, as Dean pushed himself to his feet. "Twenty-six different dipping sauces. Absolutely marvelous."

"Right?" Dean shrugged. "For a place that serves nothing but fries—totally worth it."

"There's a restaurant that serves nothing but french fries?" Ruby said, completely intrigued.

Dean nodded, still almost-smiling and then glared at her.

"Yes," said Death. "I'm partial to the rosemary garlic sauce myself." He turned to survey the others in the room.

Raphael's mask of calm started to crack.

"Have any of you wondered what your friend Castiel has been doing these last ten minutes?" Death asked.

"He is not a friend," Raphael said. "He is my brother and very misguided."

"Misguided, yes." Death took a step closer to the archangel. "You tried the ritual yourself not more than five minutes ago, did you not?"

Raphael's eyes fell. "It failed. I said the words correctly, I had the right ingredients—"

"Are you quite sure about that?" Death asked, pointing to the bloody sigil on the wall.

Sam walked over to the wall and ran his finger through the still wet curve on the right. He brought his finger to his mouth and tasted it. "Dog."

"Dog?" Raphael repeated.

"Skinwalker?" Ruby asked, walking next to Sam to look at the blood-sigil.

"No, poodle," Sam said. "The spell called for poodle-blood?"

Raphael's brow furrowed. "It most certainly did not. The demon must have switched the jars."

"Demon?" Sam cocked his head to the side. "Crowley's dead. I killed him."

Dean raised his eyebrows.

"Not Crowley, the other one." Raphael frowned at Ruby, looking beneath her skin at her true form. "Looks like you only older, and she's got Lucifer's stench all over her, too."

"Meg," Ruby said. "She's helping Castiel?"

"Helping him tear a hole in the worlds," Death said. "Let's go have a look, shall we?"

Ruby felt the world shift around her again, as subtle and immediate as what Eve had done minutes earlier. They were somewhere else. An abandoned warehouse, dark except for the wan light from a streetlight up on the highway just outside of the windows, and another glowing light coming from the far wall. There were two figures standing in front of the wall: one wearing a trench-coat, the other smaller one wearing a leather jacket.

"Castiel?" Dean said, breaking out into a jog towards the light until he caught sight of a collapsed form lying in the middle of the warehouse floor. "Bobby?" He ran towards the fallen man and knelt by his side.

"Meg," Ruby said. "What do you want to bet she was planning this all along?"

"Makes sense strategically," Sam said. "There are plenty of demons stronger than her. How else is she gonna keep the throne?" Sam held his hand out towards Meg, and nothing happened.

Ruby's heart sank as she realized Death had blocked all of them, her own power not responding in the least.

Raphael had crossed the room and grabbed hold of Castiel's arm, pulling at him as the light pouring from the wall intensified. The portal was opening.

"Purgatory…Sam, that's Purgatory. It's open," Ruby said. "We have to stop them, now!"

They ran forward, passing Dean who looked up at them from Bobby's fallen form. Sam stopped next to him, looked down at Bobby and said, "He'll be fine."

Dean's eyes narrowed. "Just because he has a pulse, doesn't mean he's fine." Then he stood up and started to walk towards the portal.

Death hadn't moved from his spot in the center of the room. Ruby turned to him, curious about what he was going to do. Then a second force joined them, the already over-charged air growing even heavier. Eve appeared beside Death, wearing Mary Winchester's face once again.

"Lady Echidna," Death said, smiling softly. "We have a bit of a problem here, don't we?"

Eve smiled over at the horseman. "It's been a long time."

"It has."

They turned to watch Castiel, Raphael and Meg, while Ruby, Sam and Dean stared at them.

"Mom?" Dean asked, his voice shaky.

Eve shook her head, the long blond hair shifting to black as she took on another form—a young woman, with pale grey eyes.

Dean's face contorted in anger, and his hand clenched into a fist.

"That would be an extraordinarily bad idea," Death said.

Dean turned away from them and with one last look to Bobby, crossed the room to where the two angels and Meg stood by the portal.

"Sorry," Ruby heard herself say. "I tried— we tried to stop them, but—"

"I've seen all this before," Death said, without turning to face her. "We both have. And we decided, this time around, that things should play out differently."

"You time-traveled?" Sam asked.

Eve turned to smile indulgently at Sam. "Not exactly."

Death followed Eve's gaze and looked from Ruby to Sam. "The universe is made of millions upon millions of strands—interweaving in points, and separate in others. This particular knot has proven troublesome."

Eve's smile turned to sorrow when she looked at Ruby. "This is a deeply-worn path, difficult to redirect, but not impossible." She turned to Death. "If we let the pieces move as they have before, the death toll will be astronomical. There's too much chaos. Not just for my world, but for this one. For yours…" she pointed down, and then pointed up "…and for theirs. We need to add a new piece to the board."

"Agreed," Death said, his eyes on Sam.

"Let me kill Meg," Sam said. "I can do it easy, if you keep Raphael busy."

Eve walked up to Sam and took his hand. "You can kill them all. Easily. And then Heaven will scream for your head, and Hell will be yours. You'll be the new king"

Sam shook his head. "I don't want to be king."

"What you want doesn't matter. That's what'll happen. Demons respect power over all other things. Don't they, Ruby?"

Ruby nodded. "Hell is supposed to be— it's supposed to be Lucifer's, but Sam— he's the vessel."

"Was the vessel," Death said. "Excuse me one moment." The horseman vanished and reappeared by Castiel, Raphael and Meg. He spoke, and all of them backed away from the hole, leaving Ruby with a clear view of the portal.

It had stabilized in size and the light was even more intense than it had been moments earlier.

"What is that?" Sam asked as they walked slowly towards the wall. "The light?"

"Souls. Millions of monster-souls trying to bust out of Purgatory," Ruby said, her voice nearly a whisper.

"They're so bright," Sam said. "I thought they'd be more—"

"Monstrous?" Ruby asked. "Like demons?"

"Yeah."

"You don't understand," Castiel said to Death. "Raphael is a tyrant. I'm trying to save Heaven."

"You already have," Death said. "Would you like to see what your salvation brought them? What you did to set things right?"

Castiel's face brightened. "Yes."

"Then see," Death said.

Castiel's eyes glowed a soft blue and his face shifted from happiness to sorrow to absolute misery within seconds. When the light faded from his eyes, he said nothing and looked down at the floor.

"What'd you see?" Dean asked.

Castiel shook his head.

Dean turned the angel towards him. "Cas—"

"I won't make that mistake again," Castiel said quietly, not to Dean, or to anyone in particular.

"No, you won't." Death turned from Castiel to Raphael. "You've had things go your way, too. Many times. Would you like to see your Heaven?"

Raphael nodded and her eyes glowed softly. She staggered back a few steps and brought her hand to her mouth. When the light faded, she didn't say a word.

"I am giving you one more chance here. I'm tired of cleaning up after you and your petty squabbles, but it's a different matter entirely when you go from throwing pebbles to nuclear warheads." Death held his hand out, and his cane appeared. "I'm sending you both home. You will stay there until you reach an agreement. This is not a request, you understand, it's a statement of fact."

Death tapped his cane on the hard floor of the warehouse, and with a yellow-white pull of light, Castiel and Raphael vanished.

Meg had stepped back further and further away from the wall.

"If you're gonna run, now would probably be a good time," Ruby said.

Meg looked from Ruby to Eve to Death uncertainly. _Tried. Can't._

 _Try again,_ Ruby thought back at her. She'd felt her own power resurface moments ago. Whatever lesson Death was teaching them, it was drawing to a close.

A moment later Meg was gone.

"Now, Dean," Death said, "…there's still the matter of your brother."

"You gonna put him back together?" Dean asked. His face was carefully calm, but underneath, Ruby could see that he was terrified.

So was she. If anyone _could_ get Sam's soul out of the cage, it was Death. But Sam's soul had been trapped with Lucifer and Michael for so long, there was no telling what had happened to it.

"You can't—" she said, before she could stop herself.

Eve chuckled. "She's not wrong."

"What do you mean?" Dean asked. He turned to Death, "You said you could."

Death's eyes narrowed. "I told you I would restore your brother's soul, but that it would not be as you remembered."

"You said you'd fix him," Dean's jaw quivered but he kept his voice calm. "This isn't my brother," Dean said, pointing to Sam, "He's got no right to wear his skin."

Sam stepped closer to Dean, but kept a good three feet of space between them. "I'm not who you remember. But I am him. A part of him, anyway."

"And therein lies the problem," Death looked from Dean to Sam. "I can get Sam's soul for you, and I can put it back in Sam's body, but you have to understand something. This—" he pointed at Sam, "—is not an empty vessel."

"He doesn't have a soul," Dean said, and his confusion tilted to anger.

"He didn't," Death said. "He was an anomaly. In all my time…" he paused. "I have seen only eight human beings without a soul. But this is the first who was given the ability to grow his own." The horseman turned to Eve. "And you knew exactly what you were doing."

"I wasn't sure it would work." Eve looked at Sam and winked, "I was hoping it would."

"For purely selfless reasons, of course," Death said, with barely hidden sarcasm.

"We need a new guardian. If we'd had one in place, things would never have gone this far," Eve said.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Dean said, looking suspiciously from Eve to Death.

Sam shook his head as a small smile spread across his lips, "I already have a soul."

"No, you don't—it's stuck in a cage—that's kinda the whole problem." Dean snapped, stepping closer to Sam. He was angry, but there was panic underneath his voice.

"I didn't have one before..." Sam said. "…but Death just said it himself: I grew one. Maybe because of what Eve did, I don't know, but I— I've been dreaming."

Ruby watched Sam's eyes as they grew brighter while he talked.

"I have these intense dreams, and I'm sleeping again—that's why, because I have a soul. My own soul. So you can't have your brother back the way he was."

Dean moved quickly, like he was about to throw a punch, but Ruby positioned herself in between them. She thought of the beast and its hungry eyes. That was Sam, now. This Sam. His wants were simple, and he didn't want to lose his hunting ground.

"This body is mine," Sam said, his voice lower. "Every cell is mine. You really want to put Sammy's soul back in here after everything I've done to it?" He watched Dean's eyes for a reaction. "It's barely even human."

Dean's nostrils flared but he turned away from Sam and focused on Death. "Is he telling the truth?"

"As he understands it, yes," Death said. "But that's irrelevant." He reached for Sam, and his hand passed through Sam's skin, grabbing hold of the soul underneath. He pulled hard, holding onto the horns curling at the top of Sam's head until what Sam had become started to manifest outside of his body.

Dean caught Sam's empty body as it collapsed, looking up at Death, and what he'd extracted from Sam's body, with wide eyes.

Ruby had caught glimpses in Sam's dreams, but seeing it here was something else entirely. His body was huge—ten feet of solid grey muscle, a powerful jaw with long sharp teeth, and dark yellow eyes darting around furiously as it struggled in Death's grip.

Death's appearance was that of an old, frail man, but he dragged Sam's monstrous soul behind him without the slightest sign of effort, bringing him closer and closer to the portal. It would have been almost funny if Ruby hadn't been scared enough to feel her throat tightening up.

Sam's struggles had ceased, though not voluntarily. Ruby could see it in his eyes. He called out to her with his mind desperately, unable to make a sound, or move. _Help me!_

"Stop! Please!" Ruby said to Death, grabbing a hold of his arm in what she knew was an act of futility.

Death didn't even spare her a glance, as he stopped a few feet from the wall, turned quickly, and threw Sam's huge form through the portal.

 

"No!" Ruby yelled, running forward. Sam's form disappeared in the mass of light, and the hole between the worlds began to close.

She turned to Eve, who looked once again like her own mother. "Why? He had a right to live. That's all he wanted."

"And Death has just sent him to an eternal hunting ground. He's meant to be there. What he is now, what he made himself into—this world isn't enough for him. But mine is." Eve gave Death a polite nod and touched her hand to the closing portal. The strands of light seemed to wrap around her fingers. She flung her fingers wide and the light, millions of purgatory souls, retracted. Behind them was somewhere else—liquid through the distortion, but clear enough that Ruby could make out bits and pieces: pale sky, dark earth, rocks and trees. "We always have room for one more," Eve said over her shoulder, and then she stepped through.

Ruby looked from Dean, still clutching his brother's empty body, to Death, and made a decision. She ran forward, flinging herself through the small hole in the wall just before it closed.


	5. Chapter 5

 

Her feet moved swiftly through the forest, its thorns and needles soft under her feet. She was in a new world, but she'd been here before. She knew this forest intimately, her feet running as surely between the trees as they had when she was a girl. She listened as she ran, hearing howls and cries she'd never known existed. There were things moving in the trees—huge and long limbed, things that hadn't set foot on earth in centuries. Some of them started to follow her, and she ran faster, weaving between the trees to slow them down.

She ran until she got to a cliff, and only then did she start to panic. The edge was jagged and the drop was immense—a hundred feet easy, maybe more, ending in a churning pool of water that moved like an ocean. She didn't know the laws here. Would her body heal? Was it her borrowed body, or her true self made flesh? She looked down at her hands, and they weren't quite human, but they weren't pure sharpened bone like her demonic form either. She was somewhere in between. There was no warmth left in her chest, and no trace of the shimmering light running up and down her skin. Whatever protection Eve had granted her before was gone.

The growls of the things chasing her grew louder as they slowed and formed a half circle in front of her. She turned to face them and held up her hand, hoping to either calm them or push them away. She couldn't feel her power anymore. It wasn't like before when it had been blocked, it was just…gone. She felt vulnerable, more human than she had in centuries. Reaching down to her belt she found her knife missing and when she kneeled down, reaching into her boot slowly, she found her other knife gone as well. She was stuck somewhere between demon and human, powerless, and unarmed. Peachy.

The spider-wolf thing directly across from her lowered its head, like it was sniffing her scent, and let out a warning growl as it stepped closer.

Ruby took another reflexive step back, sending a pebble falling off the edge of the cliff. She heard it ping off the side of the rock-face twice and then nothing as it continued to fall. "Hi," she said. "I'm new here. Any idea where I could find Sam? He's about…" She held her hands out wide, one high above her head and the other pointing down to the ground. "…yea big. Horns, big teeth, yellow eyes. He's new too. Came in right before Eve."

The spider-wolf growled again and stepped closer.

"Guess that's a no?" She looked around for anything she could use as a weapon, finally settling on the largest rock she could lift. She waited for a moment and then leapt, her hand just skimming the edge of the large stone before the pack surrounding her closed in. Her fingers clutched the stone and she brought it crashing into the jaw of the monster above her right before it closed its mandibles around her. It staggered away and another two took its place, one of them piercing her shoulder with its long pointed leg-spike.

Ruby cried out at the pain of the wound, so much stronger than anything she'd felt as a demon, and saw the blood begin to well up. She moved the rock to her other hand and tried to ram it into the other spider-wolf's head, but it ducked and hissed, venom dripping from its fanged mouth. Ruby's knees started to buckle from the venom, or pain or both and she staggered backwards towards the edge of the cliff. Her vision started to stutter—black stars winking in and out of existence and she tried to lower herself to the ground, wary of the edge behind her. Another lower growl filled the air, and she stumbled back another step as her eyes closed, a powerful sense of vertigo filling her body with lead. She felt her heel touch air and tried to right herself, but she could barely see anymore. The grey sky kept growing dimmer above her.

The wind felt cool against her back as she fell and the throbbing in her shoulder had all but vanished. Her limbs were numb, and she thought maybe she'd fall asleep. She barely remembered what sleep felt like, but she thought she remembered it was kind of like this. Only with less falling-to-your-death.

She hit the water hard, and the impact not only hurt, it chased the numbing sensations of the venom right out of her system. She opened her eyes wide against the force of the water and looked up, trying to see how far under she'd gone. The water was as murky as the sky, but she let her instincts direct her and swam towards what she was pretty sure was the surface. Maybe it was the shock of the fall, or purgatory as a whole, but she felt panic start to push her faster—that horrible feeling of not being able to see what's beneath you, but a primal surety that something's there, waiting. She swam faster and faster, forcing herself not to look down. Once she reached the surface, she'd find the shore, and swim there and get out. She'd find somewhere to hide, make a weapon out of anything she could get her hands own. She could survive here, and she would. And Sam was here, too. Somewhere in the forest, probably just as lost as she was.

The surface was close now, she could see the light of the pale sky and just as her fingertips broke through, something long and fast curled itself around her leg and pulled her down with so much force she gasped in shock, swallowing a mouthful of water. If she'd been fully human she would've drowned right then, but instead her eyes burned and she struggled to see what it was that had grabbed her. And then really wished she hadn't. Whatever it was, was _enormous_ , a huge serpent circling her from afar with its body, while its tail hung onto her, holding her completely still with nothing more than a casual display of strength. When it turned its giant head, she wondered how far back its eyes were, until she realized it didn't have any. It just had a mouth full of teeth and a long bifurcated tongue. The head lashed out at her quickly, its jaw wide enough to swallow her whole.

She struggled in its hold, and pushed as much water with her hands as she could, evading its strike just in time. She turned away, her foot rotating and loosening just enough to give her hope. Then it pulled her back down as it started to wrap itself around her more tightly. Her ribs cracked and the pain in her shoulder started anew. Something huge fell into the water beside her, hitting the water hard enough that she could hear its impact. The serpent's hold on her tightened and its slick body coiled around her more until she couldn't see a thing.

The next few minutes were strange. She was pretty sure she lost consciousness for a bit. The rest was mostly churning water and water-distorted roars of rage.

When Ruby could see clearly again, she was out of the water, but soaking wet. She pushed herself up onto her elbows, trying to orient herself. She was lying on wet earth, the lake—not an ocean then, a huge lake—was to her left, the water gently lapping at the bank. There were trees to her right, the edge of the forest she'd been in. The grey-blue tint of the sky had grown darker and she wondered if it would be night soon instead of the never quite day, perpetual dusk. She sat up further and her head ached. Her shoulder did too, but it was healing, she could tell from the uncomfortable way the skin pulled around the wounded muscle. She cupped her hand over the hole the poison had left a sickly shade of blackening red, and focused, trying to make the injury heal faster. The last thing she needed was to be caught unawares and wounded, by whatever other predators were out here.

She still couldn't feel a trace of power inside of her, but her body responded anyway, the wound growing smaller, but more painful as she willed the tissue to rebuild itself.

"The Hell?" she muttered, trying to understand what Purgatory had done to her, what she'd become. Part of her wanted to go look in the surface of the water and see her reflection. But something had just tried to eat her and she still had no idea how she'd gotten away.

A soft noise from behind her, from the direction of the woods, drew her attention. It was barely more than a muffled grunt but whatever it was…it was close. Ruby pushed herself to her feet, careful not to make a sound and walked towards the tree-line. The trees weren't that dense here at the edge of the woods, but they were thick with branches and needles from pines that had grown so large their trunks were easily ten feet wide. She put her hand on the tree closest to her so her feet would make even less noise and stepped forward, under the dark canopy.

The forest was strangely silent. Nothing like the noise she'd heard when she'd first fallen into this world. There was an absolute stillness, the kind that only comes after everything nearby has fled. But she knew something was here. She took a few steps further in and froze when her foot crunched down on some dry needles beneath her. She bit her lip, waiting for a reaction, for whatever it was to come bounding her way. Instead, there was another huff—a heavy tired breath and a pained sound. One she recognized.

Ruby moved quickly, rushing towards the direction of the sound. The bed of needles under her feet crackled, but she didn't care anymore. She ran until she was sure she was exactly where the sound had come from, and then stopped. To her right was a small clearing, not big enough to let the dim light of the sun come through, but mostly empty of needles. In the center of the clearing was a large grey boulder, streaked with red, and it was breathing.

She knew what it was— _who_ it was, the second she saw him, and her eyes filled with tears. Whatever had attacked her would've swallowed her whole. She remembered the sheer size of its serpentine body, the massive fanged mouth. But she was still here, because someone else had joined the fray.

"Sam," she said, running to the beast's side. She kneeled down next to him and looked at his wounds. There were deep gashes running down his side flanks, chunks of flesh missing where the water-serpent had bitten into him. "What was that thing?"

She ran her hand over the only undamaged part of his back and shifted her position until she could see his head. His eyes were closed and he looked like he was sleeping. His breathing was shallow and quick and he didn't react to her presence at all.

"This place sucks," Ruby said, her voice shakier than she would've liked. "I don't know how to get out, either. There has to be a way though."

Sam's breathing stayed steady and his grey skin felt hot to the touch. Ruby looked around for something she could use to clean his wounds, moss maybe or leaves. She could use her shirt, but then it didn't seem like there was going to be a way to get more clothes in this place.

She picked up a jagged piece of rock and walked until she found a particularly moss-covered tree not too far from Sam. Then she started cutting the moss off of the bark, trying to remember what she new about antiseptics in nature. She could use comfrey leaves, but whether or not that actually existed here, she didn't know. Even the trees and moss were different. The leaves of what she'd thought were oaks were too thick and spiky, and the birch tree bark burned her skin when she touched it.

Deciding to settle on water for the time being, she headed back towards the lake, soaked the moss with water and carried it back over to Sam, who hadn't moved an inch. She started running the cold moss over the open tears in his skin as gently as she could, watching his blood run down his sides and pool on the ground below.

A branch to their left snapped, and her head jerked— scanning the trees for danger. If something was coming, she had to defend them both. She picked up her sharp rock again, then started to look around for a large stick, or anything else she could use if she had to. Walking backwards towards a tree where she'd seen some loose branches earlier, she searched the ground around until she found one that was well balanced and sturdy. She broke the twigs off, grabbed a nearby cord of thick ivy and began to bind the rock to the tip of the branch as she waited for the next warning sound.

The sharp edge of the stone grazed her skin when she turned it slightly, trying to force it further down into the wood. She could feel a small cut in the center of her palm.

Sam's large form stirred and he raised his head, blinking at her with dark amber eyes.

"You're awake," she said. "Good, because something's coming."

Standing on all fours Sam looked even taller than he had when Death had pulled him out of his body. His head was at eye level with hers as he scented the air. He crossed the ground between them quickly but unsteadily, the wounds slowing his movements. When he reached her, his snout pushed against her hand, until she opened it, dropping her make-shift spear to the ground. His tongue moved across the tiny cut on her palm and he let out a contented sound, pushing closer to her.

Ruby watched, completely stunned as one by one, all the large gashes on his body started to close. "That's new," she said, impressed. "Guess my blood's a little more concentrated here, huh?"

Sam grunted in approval and turned away from her, facing the trees. He sniffed at the air, his head turning as he studied the branches overhead.

"I heard something a few minutes ago. Small I think, but I don't know if—"

The trees above them shook as something fell straight down from above and landed in the center of the clearing, directly across from Sam. It looked like an oil-slick black puddle of goo, but only for a moment, then something grew out of it, higher and higher until it was human-sized. It looked like a man, but it wasn't. She could see the wrongness of it under its skin—something far larger, and hungrier.

"What the hell are you?" Ruby asked, as she reached back down to grab her weapon.

It grinned at her, threw back its head and roared, its mouth expanding until it was larger than its head. The fangs and tongue of the water-serpent were on the humanoid body the thing had made, and Ruby had had just about enough.

Sam lunged forward, tackling the thing to the ground, and Ruby followed, her makeshift spear held high.


End file.
